


By a Different Name

by eliddell



Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Action, Amnesia, But may quack like one sometimes, Do AUs quack?, Drama, Families of Choice, M/M, Not really an AU, Pseudo-modern setting, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 86,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4638918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gavin Drakkon is the sheriff of East Sairaag County in a world that no longer has sorcerers, Mazoku, or dragons monopolizing the headlines on an irregular basis.  As far as he knows, there's nothing very special about him once you get past his size and his blood-red hair.  All he wants to do is keep the peace, avoid his ex-wife, look after his step-daughter, and get into the occasional fist fight to keep from being bored to death.</p><p>Then an odd call about a "crime in progress" takes him out to a remote farm, where he discovers a time capsule from the distant past.  Contents:  several doglike monsters and a Mazoku-dragon hybrid in human form, who doesn't speak any modern language but seems to like his "saviour" an awful lot.</p><p>Since then, Weird Stuff has been showing up in droves and Gavin is remembering bits and pieces of a life that he never lived.</p><p>Or did he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dreaming in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Um . . . blame it on a re-watch of the entire 104 episodes of Slayers/NEXT/TRY/Revolution-R and my Muse's desire to play with amnesiac characters for a while. Or something like that.
> 
> This is one of what may end up being as many as five or six unrelated post-series stories about Gaav and Val—I have one other already complete, two first halves, and a fragment. Which probably won't be enough for me to get the pairing into the sidebar here single-handedly, but hey, I tried. Most of the other stories are more conventional than this one. I'll do my best to get back to the KKM stuff after they're done with me.
> 
> As the tags say, this takes place in a distant-future version of the canon Slayers world, not an AU. Sort of. From the very moment Mazenda showed up, things got _seriously_ weird in that area. Don't say I didn't warn you. Anyway, there's a lot of bits and pieces of background slipped in here and there about what happened after Lina's era and before this story. Hopefully everything should make sense as it stands, and the exact chronology doesn't matter anyway, but I'm glad to answer questions if something's difficult to make sense of. The whole thing is chronologically messy and peppered with flashbacks, anyway. I'm following the anime storyline (that's pretty much a requirement, since the entire TRY storyline doesn't exist in the novels), although it really matters very little in this case. Background material from the novels or other sources is sometimes used where it doesn't contradict the anime.
> 
> Also, I rated this story "mature" not just due to the sex and violence, but also for Gaav being a total potty mouth. And he's the narrator. So if swarms of four-letter Anglo-Saxon monosyllables bother you, you might want to find another 'fic to read.
> 
> Police procedure as shown in this story isn't meant to match anything in the real world (and wasn't really researched, either), although the basic flavour is kinda-sorta-maybe-almost American, with bits and pieces wafting in from other nations or just made up on the spot—mostly the latter.
> 
> Name spellings may randomly match any semi-legitimate romanization, although most are taken from the original translation of the anime as done by Software Sculptors, back in the day. I managed to avoid sticking Japanese honourifics into English text this time, but there is a bit of (frequently deliberately mis-)romanized Japanese present, for reasons that should become obvious when you run across it.
> 
> Spells were mostly transcribed from KanzakaDex ( kanzaka.wikia.com ). Anything you can't find there, I made up.
> 
> The world, characters, and plot of "The Slayers" belong to Hajime Kanzaka (plus Rui Araizumi and a bunch of people who worked on the anime form of the story), not to me.

"Want more coffee, boss?" Our dispatcher-slash-receptionist leaned in through the door to my office. 

I snorted. "I'd prefer a shot of straight battery acid." Or a beer, but I at least had to _pretend_ to be an upstanding citizen while I was on duty. As I scratched the back of my neck, I discovered that my hair was tickling my collar again. It always grew way too fast for its own good, but just letting it go until it got to whatever length it wanted to be would make me stand out even more than I already did—so it was the barber for me, just as soon as I could make an appointment. 

"Right—I'll send Kanzel out for some when he gets back." Mazenda swayed her hips saucily as she went from receptionist's desk to coffee maker and back again. I didn't know how she kept herself from sticking to the cheap fake leather on her chair, since her jean shorts didn't even nearly cover all of her thighs. Somehow she managed to wear those, and sandals, and a man's long-sleeved white dress shirt, in mid-March, and make the combination look normal even though the temperature outside was barely above freezing at noon. 

As senses of style went, it was kind of freaky, but the only other person who had applied for her position had been a fucking Ceiphied's Witness, and I can't stand those people. Well, I'd also hired her because she was the only other person I'd ever met who had bright blood-red hair like mine, although she didn't have any other non-human genes. Not like her boyfriend. Or me. 

The phone rang just then—the landline on her desk, not my cell. She went to pick it up. "East Sairaag County Sheriff's Office! Oh, Mr. Axel, how can I help you—crime in progress? What—" Mazenda shut up and just listened for several seconds. Then she hit the mute button on the phone and said, "I can't make heads or tails of what he's talking about, boss, but it sounds like he might have found a body." 

"Fuck," I muttered. "All right, all right, I'll go. Up at his farm? Tell him it's going to take me at least twenty minutes." 

Mazenda nodded and took the phone off mute. I didn't bother to listen to what she was saying—I already had my coat on and was on my way through the side door into the garage, ducking so that I wouldn't hit my head on the doorframe. Not for the first time, I reflected that the world is made for fucking midgets. 

I took the van, not that I had much choice. It was the only thing we had with enough headroom that the top of my skull wouldn't be bouncing off the ceiling every time I hit a bump in the road, since Dinan had taken our only motorbike to check on a vandalism report at the other end of the county. 

Old man Axel's farm was well out of town, accessible only via a dirt road that previous vehicles had churned into a mess of ice-rimmed mud. _Fuck_ , was I glad no one had ever been dumb enough to make me chase them through here at speed. Given the amount of force I had to apply to the steering wheel to keep the van moving straight, I was surprised I hadn't broken something inside the damned thing. I'd busted up my convertible that way once. 

I'd been kind of glad when the call came in, since it represented a chance to get out of the office, but by the time I got to Axel's farm I was wishing the day had been quiet. 

I parked the van and got out. "Anybody here?" I boomed in my best loudspeaker imitation. That got me an echo . . . and two dogs, mutts a good three feet high at the shoulder that eyed me suspiciously as the echoes faded. Dogs never have liked me much. 

I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets and began to circle the yard. Axel had the usual assortment of outbuildings and crap you find on a farm, most of them old and looking like they were about to fall down. There was a big tractor parked in front of the largest building, a pickup truck next to the house . . . and a backhoe just visible behind one of the sheds. Judging from the tire tracks, it had just been brought here recently. 

Well, backhoe implied digging, at least. Maybe that was how Axel had found this supposed body. It beat poking around at random, anyway. I clumped around to the back of the shed, scowling as I felt my boots accumulate more and more freezing cold mud. 

The scoop of the backhoe was poised above a hole, which wasn't all that surprising. The size of the hole was a bit more unusual, and the rocks sticking out here and there weren't just random, they were shaped blocks of stone that had to have been used for building something. I didn't know why anyone had been digging a hole here in the first place, but it looked like they'd broken through the ceiling of a tunnel or a buried building. More than that, there was light coming up from below, an eerie red glow. 

Old man Axel was crouched at the edge of the pit, looking down into what I thought might be the corner of a room. He didn't look up as I approached him, so I nudged his shoulder. 

"Sheriff! Sorry—turned my hearing aid off so I wouldn't have to listen to all the noise from the backhoe, and forgot to turn it back on." 

I sighed as his hand reached for his ear. I did have some respect for the old coot for sticking it out all alone in this place even though he was past eighty, but there were times . . . 

"Do you mind telling me what's going on?" I said, forcing my irritation down. I got a lot of practice at that. 

"Truth is, I don't rightly know. Can't be good, though. There's a guy down there in a fight with a bunch of . . . things . . . and they're all frozen up like statues. Looks like some kind of old magic, and I know better than to mess with that." 

"Got a problem with me going down and having a look?" I knew I'd probably end up calling in someone from the archaeology department over at Sairaag U if this was what it sounded like, but I wanted to be sure it was worth the trouble first. 

"Help yourself. There's a rope over there, tied solid around one of the pilings under the shed . . ." 

Getting down to the underground level involved skidding down a slick slope of clay-thick soil, and I understood right away why he'd put the rope there—getting back up without it was likely to be a pain in the ass. At least there was no mud at the bottom once I got off the slope, just stone pavement, and I scraped the edges of my boots against a fallen stone block to get rid of some of the accumulated crud before moving forward. 

The backhoe had indeed broken into one corner of a large, high-ceilinged room. I guessed it at about thirty feet by twenty. Ten or twelve feet from the broken end, there was a sort of curtain of light, blood red and rippling gently, although it never shifted significantly forward or backward. It wasn't bright enough to obscure what was on the other side, where three monsters were poised to spring on a young man with a sword in his hand. 

It was a startling tableau. The creatures looked vaguely like wolves, five-foot-tall wolves with six legs and tentacles. They were black with purple accents. There had been four of them originally, but the fourth was in pieces on the floor, its eyes gazing back sightlessly at me and the break in the ceiling. One of the others was frozen in mid-leap, just hanging there in the air. 

The man with the sword was probably in his early twenties, although it was difficult to be sure when his aquamarine hair and the horn sticking out of his forehead proved he wasn't wholly human. He stood about six feet tall, and enough of his body was visible for me to be able to tell he had a decent amount of muscle on him—then again, he would have had to have to even hold up a sword four inches wide and five-and-a-half feet long. He looked like he was snarling at the wolf-creatures, eyes glittering with rage as he plunged ahead, his blade unerringly aimed for the one frozen in midair. 

"You're a fighter, aren't you?" I said out loud. "I wonder how you screwed up so badly that you got trapped here . . . poor bastard." I could admire his spirit, though. His expression said he was going to fight to the last and give no quarter. "I think I would've liked to know you." 

I didn't quite dare touch the red light, although I had the uncanny feeling that the least brush of my fingers would unfreeze time and let the not-a-wolf complete its leap, the sword swing the rest of the way through its arc and decapitate it. _Could_ they be alive? I wondered as I climbed out of the hole to someplace where I could get decent reception on my cell. There was no reason to believe they were . . . but there was also no reason to believe that they weren't. No one understood that kind of magic well enough anymore to be able to say. 

The number was right at the end of my contact list. I hadn't needed it in a couple of years. I just hoped the crappy one-and-a-half bars of reception I was getting held out long enough for me to explain was what going on. 

"University of Sairaag Archaeology Department." 

"I'd like to speak to Professor Greywords," I said. 

"May I tell him who's calling?" 

"Gavin Drakkon, on official business." 

"One moment, please." 

Clicking sounds, a burst of sickly music, and then a different voice came on. "Sheriff Drakkon. It's been a while since the last time we spoke." 

"Professor Greywords. I've found something I think you might be interested in." 

"Oh?" 

Quickly, I sketched out what old man Axel had unearthed—the figures frozen in time behind a curtain of magic. 

"That is _very_ interesting." I could just about see the old coot running his fingertip along the edge of his coffee cup. "I'm getting a little old to do my own fieldwork, so I'll send one of my graduate students to perform a preliminary survey. He should be there in about an hour." 

"Right." 

We exchanged a few more pleasantries and hung up. 

I hate waiting. It's the most boring thing ever devised. I had to go back to the van so that I could keep half an ear out for the police radio while I played chess on my phone. Fucking thing beat me more than half the time, even though I'm a pretty good player when I'm matched up against a person. It's like I can't take a contest with a dumb machine seriously. 

It was a full hour and twenty minutes before a beige compact car wallowed its way along the rutted drive to park beside me. The kid that got out looked awfully young for his age, and wasn't wearing enough clothes—just a windbreaker and jeans. Unlike Mazenda, he couldn't take the cold, either, because every gust of wind had him hunched and shivering. 

He stared at me as I got out of the van—I guess old Greywords hadn't warned him what to expect. Maybe he'd given him "tall and red-haired" without mentioning that the _red_ was blood-red, not orange, and _tall_ meant more than seven feet in my case, or that I was built like a brick outhouse. 

"It's in the back," I said, nodding toward the backhoe. 

His mouth opened, then closed again . . . but after that, he managed to shake off the fish imitation. "I need to get my gear." 

"Then get it." 

First he hung a camera around his neck. Then he picked up a big, awkward backpack and slung it over his shoulders. 

"Is that it?" I asked, and he nodded. "This way, then." 

When we got to the hole, he proved he wasn't totally stupid by grabbing the rope and using it as a support while he backed down, like a rock climber. I slid down after him. Really, I didn't have to stick around—old man Axel could have given him the tour, although we would have had to figure out where the old buzzard had disappeared to first—but I was curious as to what this kid would think of the tableau. 

I wasn't disappointed. He almost dropped the backpack while he was in the process of taking it off. Once he had it down safely, he ran over to the curtain of red light and leaned against it, staring at what was beyond. 

"Those creatures—could they actually be lesser Mazoku? The one he's cut apart looks like it's bleeding black smoke . . ." 

Damned if the kid wasn't right. How had I failed to notice it? 

"And our swordsman?" I asked, not quite idly. 

"I don't know," the grad student admitted. "I've never heard of a humanoid species that has a single forehead horn. Ogres are supposed to have two, and they're not nearly that human-looking, anyway. His sword looks like it could come from any point before the Plague Years—they stopped making them that broad after that. Mind you, I've never seen one that big before at all, so I might be wrong. The clothes I don't recognize at all, but maybe someone at the department will have some idea. I have to get some pictures of this . . . Oh, man, Doctor Greywords is going to face-plant in his coffee when he sees, even if it turns out to be just an image spell . . . " 

He bustled around setting up a tripod. I planted my hands in my pockets and leaned up against a convenient stone wall. _Before the Plague Years, huh?_ That would make it at least seven centuries that the swordsman had been stuck here, poised for a blow that was never going to land. Of course, he might just have been using an old sword . . . although if so, it was well-kept, the metal gleaming. 

The sound of a car engine pulled me out of my thoughts . . . not least because I knew there was only one engine that sounded like that in the entire county. _Oh, shit._ I hoped the grad student didn't mind having an audience, because one was about to descend on us. 

"Chief? Are you down there?" 

"I pay you fucking clowns to patrol the county, not follow me around like a bunch of lost puppies," I growled back up, but Kanzel wasn't that easy to dissuade. He came sliding down the slick slope a moment later, with Dinan less than ten seconds behind. It took some impressive evasive manoeuvres on Kanzel's part to keep the two of them from ending up in a heap. 

"Maz said you'd found something interesting." In the red light, Kanzel's light blue skin, the gift of an ancestor with brau demon genes, turned a rich purple. His green hair was almost black. "I see she was right." 

"That doesn't explain what you're doing here." I wasn't going to let either of them off the hook. These idiots were undisciplined enough already. 

"Relax, Chief," Dinan said, his bald spot gleaming as he bobbed his head up and down. I wondered sometimes how he managed, working the day shift with a bunch of freaks like the rest of us, because he was almost painfully ordinary-looking—heavy-set, paunchy, with what was left of his hair well on its way to iron grey. A casual observer would have said he was the oldest person here, but he was only just past forty, and I was pushing fifty. "I just came here to have a look around, and then go back out on patrol—the bike quit again when I was halfway back, so I've got Cruiser Two." Which we'd theoretically decommissioned ten years ago, but kept around because the other vehicles didn't always hang together as well as they should. 

"Shit," I muttered. "I hope you took the fucking thing to the shop." 

"Of course I did. That damn girl mechanic looked like she was expecting it, too." 

I shrugged. "Maybe there's something to her theory that it's affected by the humidity." I wouldn't be surprised if there was, really. That girl might be young, but she was good at what she did. "And that doesn't explain what _Kanzel_ 's doing here." 

"I was going to relieve you if there was anything important going on. You're supposed to be driving a desk, you know, Boss." 

"I'll drive whatever the fuck I want," I growled, but I knew he was right. I shouldn't have been here. I didn't even know why I'd stayed to watch Greywords' grad student take his photos and make his measurements. 

I wanted one last look at the odd tableau before I left, though, and walked over to the shimmering red curtain. The grad student had touched it, even leaned on it, so I figured there would be no harm in my doing the same. 

I reached out a hand to touch the red light. The curtain was solid to the touch, neither warm nor cold, and as my fingers settled against it, a ripple ran through it. Then there was a flash and a sound of breaking glass, and the red light went out. 

In the semidarkness lit only by the pale sunlight falling through the hole the backhoe had made, something growled.


	2. Who Are You?

Someone yelled a phrase in a language I didn't understand, and suddenly we had light again, in the form of a white globe hovering just below ceiling level. The wolf-thing in the air had just completed its arc, but so had the sword, and a limb fell to the floor and bounced. 

Kanzel pulled his sidearm and sent a bullet into one of the other wolf-things, but it ricocheted off, scarring the stones of one wall. 

"Don't shoot!" I snapped. The last thing we needed was a bunch of stray bullets that couldn't even hurt those things whizzing around the room. 

The sound of my voice jerked the attention of the wolf-things to me . . . and the swordsman's as well, although he only took a brief glance, eyes widening, before he turned back to the five-legged wolf-thing he'd been fighting. 

One of the others came at me, and I met it with a punch to the face, since I didn't have much of a selection of weapons on hand. I was a bit surprised when it grunted, staggered back, and shook its head. Apparently, I could do more damage to it with bare hands than Kanzel could do with his pistol. So I kicked it hard in the chest, then grabbed its muzzle with one hand and tried to claw its throat out with the other, but I couldn't get through the fur and skin. 

I was just going to have to batter it to death. 

It wasn't an elegant fight, but this wasn't a fucking movie and the wolf-thing was stubborn, holding onto its life with all eight tentacles. And those tentacles had razor-sharp tips and were a major pain in the ass. It felt like they stung my skin when they even got near me. When I managed to pop one of the thing's eyes, it bled black smoke instead of blood. Maybe it really was a Mazoku. If not, it was some other kind of freak of nature. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Kanzel and Dinan had the grad student boxed into one corner of the room and were standing protectively between him and the wolf-things. The five-legged wolf-thing was now three-legged and down several tentacles, the one I'd been fighting was eyeing me warily, and the third one . . . shit, where was the third one? 

I felt it hurtling toward my back before I saw it. At the same moment, the one whose eye I'd popped leaped for my throat. _Shit._

I side-stepped, ducked, and came up hard and fast with both hands held stiff and straight above my head. One of them slid over belly fur without penetrating, but the other hit in just the right place and went in, leaving me wrist-deep in something slimy that left an unpleasant prickly feeling on my skin. 

Or maybe it had been just the wrong place, because I ended up with a snapping, snarling wolf-thing stuck to the end of my arm and another one coming at me from the side. And the fucking thing didn't seem to want to be shaken off. I tried to use it to hit the other one with, to keep it off, but I just ended up pivoting us both around its center of mass instead. 

There was a startled yell, and a ball of something green and black and crackling hit the third wolf-thing in the side, blasting it into a wall. The swordsman had taken his left hand off the hilt of his sword, and a bit more black lightning leaped between his fingers before grounding itself out. I gave him a grin, and to my surprise, he returned it for a split second before the creature he'd been fighting jumped at him again and he had to take another swing at it. This time he hit it at an angle through the upper body, and it came apart in two pieces, leaking black smoke everywhere. 

He turned his attention to the wolf he'd just blasted into the wall, stepping past me and my unwanted passenger, which I was trying to beat to death against any available stable surface . . . and then the swordsman stopped and said something with the inflection of a curse as the top half of the wolf-thing he'd just cut apart bit him on the ankle. This time I had a clear view of the dark energy as it gathered in the palm of his hand and blasted out once, then again. The half-wolf made a thin sound and disintegrated into grey powder on the floor. 

I finally managed to get my own wolf-thing off the end of my arm, and set to work with one hand and my boot, enlarging the hole I'd made in it. I heard the sound of someone retching not too far away, and hoped it was the grad student. If it was either of my men . . . well, in all fairness, I told myself, they'd never seen me tear a critter apart this way because I'd never done it before, but it wasn't like there was any gore—just a lot of black stuff that was too solid to really be smoke, but not solid enough to call spray. It didn't even smell of anything much. 

It was weird, manhandling that thing. Like the insides were made of black jelly that crawled away from my touch. I had to bend it almost double the wrong way before it finally decided to die, turning into grey powder that sifted through my fingers. 

I wiped my hand against the skirts of my coat, leaving grey streaks against the tan fabric. The swordsman, having finished with the third wolf-thing, prodded the pile of dust with the toe of his shoe, and then gave me another grin—a fierce, sharp expression that seemed to mean, _You sure beat that one up good!_

He hadn't been carrying a scabbard for the sword originally, but suddenly there was one in his left hand, and he slid the blade into it before putting them back into whatever nowhere he'd pulled them from. 

There was no denying it: this young man with the horn on his head was a sorcerer, the only real one I'd ever met. Possibly the only one in the world still capable of operating at his level, given the amount of knowledge lost during the Plague Years. 

"So what now?" I asked him, and he frowned, liquid gold eyes narrowing, and said something that I didn't understand. It didn't take a genius to figure out he didn't speak Modern Universal. 

After a pause, he added another sentence, and another, cycling through what I thought might be different languages. I was forced to shake my head at every hopeful look he gave me, and in the end he scowled and gave me a frustrated shrug. 

"Anyone else get any of that?" I asked, turning to my two deputies and the grad student. 

"Not a thing," Kanzel said. Dinan shook his head. 

"I think the language he started with might have been some flavour of Northern Common," the grad student said. "I've never actually heard anyone speak it before, though. If that was what it was, he really is from before the Plague Years." He was developing a goofy grin as he spoke. "Oh, wow, he's got to be a historical goldmine! Professor Greywords is going to flip!" 

I didn't give a damn about what Greywords was going to think—I was more interested in the immediate. How the hell could we . . . Oh, wait. _Worth a try. It always works in movies and novels, anyway._

I pointed at myself. "Gavin." 

At each deputy in turn. "Kanzel. Dinan." 

At the grad student— _oh, shit, I don't know his name_ —but he seemed to understand what I was doing, and supplied, "Matt." 

Then I pointed at the horned sorcerer, and raised my eyebrows. 

For a moment, he didn't seem to get it. Then he pointed to himself and said, firmly, "Val." And then at the rest of us, in reverse order. "Matt, Dinan, Kanzel." There was a hesitation before he added, "Gaavin," and he emphasized the first syllable more than I had. Since he'd gotten everyone else's name perfect down to the inflection, he had to have done that on purpose, and I wondered why. 

"Well, now that we're all introduced, there's no point in sticking around here." I jerked my thumb in the direction of the hole in the ceiling and raised my eyebrows again. Val nodded, and proved that that gesture, at least, meant the same thing to him as it did to us by moving in that direction. He scrambled up the incline right behind me, using the rope to keep his balance. 

He took two steps into the fresh air and looked around, taking in shed, backhoe, one of old Axel's dogs that had wandered back for a look, and a good-sized chunk of empty field bordered by hedgerows. I would have expected the backhoe to surprise him, but he only gave it the same once-over as everything else—maybe he thought it was a particularly inept and unlovely metal sculpture, or something. He also rubbed his arms kind of absently, and I had to admit that I doubted his clothes were keeping him all that warm. The open vest-jacket-thing and waist-length capelet that he wore on his upper body left his chest mostly bare, the trousers that went with them weren't all that heavy either, and I doubted the strip of cloth wrapped around his right forearm like a bandage was helping much. I felt the weirdest impulse to offer him my coat, even though it would have been like a tent on him—the top of his head was about level with my shoulder. 

"Come on," I said instead. "It isn't far." I jerked my head in the direction of the main yard. Kanzel was just disappearing around the side of the shed. 

I didn't understand what Val said in response, of course, any more than he understood me, but I found his voice easy on the ears. And he kept up with me as I moved off, even though he had to take three steps for every two of mine. I got the idea he didn't notice himself doing that, he just . . . did it. Like he was used to keeping up with someone much taller. 

We were rounding the corner of the shed the first time he stumbled. I didn't think it was important—just assumed he'd tripped over a rut or a rock. Kanzel, just ahead of us now, turned to stare, though. 

"Boss? Are you sure he's okay? He looks kind of pale all of a sudden." 

"He was fine five minutes ago," I grumbled . . . but when I half-turned to look at Val, I discovered Kanzel was right: he was white as a sheet. But he returned my look with a cold, sharp glare from his golden eyes. _Don't you dare coddle me,_ it said. So I wouldn't. 

He made it almost to the van before he stumbled again, and this time he went to his hands and knees in the gluey, half-frozen mud in the yard. His body shook, and he breathed in harsh gasps for a bit. Then, with a sound like " _Ch'_ ", he tried to get up, but it was like his feet wouldn't stay under him. 

"Oh, for fuck's sake," I muttered. "You know, one of you two idiots could help him up." 

"Only if you don't mind my coming to work naked tomorrow," Kanzel said. "That mud is vicious, and Maz and I haven't done a laundry run in a while . . ." 

"And I'd rather not lose a hand," Dinan said. "Have you seen the way he's looking at us?" 

Yes, I had. Like a wounded animal, unable to identify the humans approaching him as friends. 

Val made a growling noise and forced himself to his feet, staggering two steps until he could lean against the side of the van. 

"We have to get him to a hospital," I said. "Get the door of that fucking thing open. I'll get him inside." 

Dinan and Kanzel exchanged looks and did a quick round of rock-paper-scissors. Kanzel lost, because everyone in the department knew he picked scissors more often than either of the others. Scowling, he walked over to the van and opened the door. 

It occurred to me belatedly that getting Val into the barred-off back seat of a police van might not be all that easy, but the only other option was Matt's little beige car, and I wouldn't be able to fit in there with him. At the same time, I couldn't leave the defenseless student alone with a man like Val. _Lead by example,_ I told myself, and stepped up into the van, nearly flattening the top of my head in the process. Bent over in an uncomfortable position, I turned around and reached for Val's shoulder. 

He . . . regained focus, I guess you could say . . . abruptly when I touched him, snapping his head up to look at me. I beckoned to him. He looked dubiously at the van, then back at me again. I nodded, beckoned him again, offered my hand . . . all the encouragements I could think of. 

Suddenly, he smiled—not the razor-edged grin of before, but a sweet, tired expression—and placed his hand in mine. He also lifted his foot and put it on the floor of the van, and managed, with my help, to make it the rest of the way up. Inside, he staggered against me and grabbed at the front of my coat, hanging on for dear life, and refused to let go even after I'd guided him to a seat. That meant I didn't have any choice but to sit beside him, and he leaned his head against my shoulder, muttered something, sighed, and closed his eyes, still holding on. 

"I guess he likes you, Boss," Kanzel said, climbing into the driver's seat. 

"Shut up and take us to the fucking hospital," I growled. I also put my arm around Val's shoulders to keep him from bouncing around too much, half expecting him to pull away. Instead, he snuggled closer. 

His eyes flickered open briefly when Kanzel started the engine, but he glanced at me, saw I wasn't bothered, and let them slide shut again. Like he trusted my judgement. Even though he didn't know me from Ceiphied. 

The drive took half an hour. Val slept through most of it, although from time to time he would mutter something and shift against me. When I touched his throat, it was clammy and cold, but his pulse seemed steady, so I didn't tell Kanzel to turn on the siren. When we reached our destination, I shook him, and he seemed to half-wake, enough that he was able to walk through the door leaning on my elbow, and even take a bit of interest in his surroundings . . . not that they were worth much. The emergency department at East Sairaag County General was furnished with a couple of dozen plastic chairs, a plastic plant, and a couple of little plastic tables holding out-of-date magazines. Plus a smell of disinfectant thick enough to cut with a knife, of course. It made Val wrinkle his nose and mutter something. 

The nurse on duty was a middle-aged woman I knew all too well from previous visits. 

"It isn't my fault this time," I growled before she could even ask the question. "We found him under circumstances too complicated to get into right now, and he seemed okay at first, but after about ten minutes he kind of fell apart, and now he's almost too weak to stand up. No ID, and he doesn't speak Universal." 

She clucked her tongue. "I'll inform Doctor Raada. Does this mystery man of yours at least have a name, or do I put him down as 'John Doe'?" 

"Val," I replied. "No last name, or at least none that we've been able to get out of him so far." 

She grunted. "All right, since he doesn't seem to be bleeding all over the floor, it'll be a few minutes." 

I was glad it was Doctor Raada on call, and not one of the others. She had gentle hands and a casual manner, which made her less likely to spook Val. I hoped. I had a feeling that if something _did_ manage to disturb him, he'd come out of his daze fighting. 

Silene Raada was short and wore her long black hair up in a bun when she was at work. Her blue eyes were so soft and kind that it was easy to miss the intelligence in them. 

"Hello," she said. "Val, is it?" She touched his cheek gently, and he jerked away, opening his eyes. "I'm Doctor Raada," she said, pointing to herself. "Raada," she repeated. 

Val gave her a terse nod. Where he still leaned against me, I could feel his muscles tightening like steel springs, ready for action. 

"You're sure he doesn't have any Universal?" she asked me. 

I shook my head. "We found him caught in a magic trap that came apart when I touched it. Currently, our best guess is that he was stuck in there for several hundred years. He's some kind of sorcerer," I added. "I don't know if that makes any difference or not." 

"It may. Magic takes a lot of energy. It's possible that he's just exhausted himself, but I'll check him over to make sure there's nothing else wrong. Val," she said again, and pointed from him to a door at the far side of the waiting room, then beckoned. 

Val looked at me. I nodded, and he began to force his way to his feet, letting go of my coat so that he could push off against my arm and shoulder. He took a step forward in the doctor's wake, shaking with effort, and I sighed, got to my feet, and put one arm around his shoulders. With my help, he was able to get as far as the examination room. I could have sworn he was relieved when he was able to sit back down, but he was putting some effort into hiding it. 

Doctor Raada reached for his shirt-jacket-vest-thing, but he slapped her hand away, hard enough to make her wince. 

" _Val_ ," I said in an exasperated tone of voice, and tried to mime shirt removal. He blinked at me, and I wasn't sure whether he wasn't getting it or was just being a pain in the ass on purpose. With a sigh, I reached for him and tried to figure out how to unfasten that damned capelet he was wearing on top of everything. It took a few moments of fumbling to figure out that it was pinned to his jacket-thing, then wrapped around. The cords that held the garment underneath together across the front were easier, once I could see what I was doing. To my surprise, he didn't object when I stripped him, but when the doctor moved toward him, his hand rose again. I caught his wrist and shook my head firmly, and he subsided, although he still seemed very tense. He jerked when Doctor Raada put her stethoscope against his chest. 

"His heart and lungs sound healthy enough," she said, raising her head again. "Heart rate's fast, but that isn't surprising. He seems a bit underweight for his size, but not _quite_ dangerously so. A lot of scars, but they're old and none of them seem tender. It looks like he was attacked a long time ago by something with very large claws—maybe a plasma dragon—and there are what look like the remains of old burns, straight narrow lines like he was beaten with a hot poker. This one on his chest was a stab wound, though, a deep one. I'd try to take his blood pressure, but I'm not sure he'd allow it, and his norms may be nothing like the human ones anyway." 

"Any idea what species he is?" I asked. 

"Dragon, at least in part," she replied promptly. "I'm not sure what kind of dragon, but his breastbone has a deeper keel than . . . er. In any case, I could feel it while I was shifting the stethoscope around. I'd like to check his back. See if you can get him to stay still. He seems to trust you more than me." She let out a little laugh. "Not surprising, I suppose—for all he knows, I want to haul him off to my harem full of pretty-boys. He _is_ good-looking, in an edgy kind of way." 

"I don't know why he latched on to me." It wasn't exactly a complaint—really, it was kind of flattering—but I hated not understanding. 

"Well, he could have done worse. I won't claim I like you, Sheriff. You're a violent man and you like to fight, and that runs against my morals. You know that. But . . . I don't know how to put it exactly, but you don't attack people for no reason—I get the impression it's the _contest_ you enjoy, not inflicting pain. You've . . . got a certain integrity, I guess. And given these scars . . . maybe he finds your way of thinking easier to understand than mine." 

_Maybe._ I remembered the light in Val's eyes, the sharp grin he'd shot me when he'd seen what I'd done to one of his attackers. I'd known from the first moment I'd seen him that he was a fighter. It was possible that he, too, could have recognized me as a kindred spirit. 

"Definitely a dragon," Doctor Raada said after a moment more of feeling Val up, while he scowled and stared at the floor. "Or at least a lot of dragon blood. I can feel his wingbones, in their reduced form." Then she froze for a moment. "This scar . . . if it goes all the way through, it should intersect the heart. How can he still be alive?" 

"Magic," I suggested with a smirk. "Or more likely, it just _looks_ like it goes all the way through." 

She rolled her eyes. _Like I couldn't figure that out,_ she said without actually speaking. "Anyway, I'd like to take some blood, but I don't see how I can without spooking him. Based on what I've seen so far, he's just exhausted—in addition to what he's been doing for the past few hours, he's got some long-term metabolic debt built up. I prescribe a good night's sleep, followed by a couple of weeks of light activity and good food. We can find him a bed here—" 

"I'll take him home with me," I interrupted. "You might need that bed for someone else, and we have a perfectly good guest room that hasn't been used at all since we moved in. You don't approve?" 

She shrugged, but she was still frowning. "Val shows some signs of hyperarousal. He may be dangerous to be around, if he's prone to flashbacks or acting out. Anyway, I doubt he could hurt _you_ very much, but what about Alya?" 

"She's at her mother's for the break. I've got nearly a week before she gets back, and by that time, I should be able to find somewhere else for Val to stay." _I hope._ The horned sorcerer had no money, no identification, and didn't speak the language, so it might be a while before he could shift for himself. The university would probably take him, but getting him to agree might not be all that easy. 

I tossed Val his clothes, and he got everything back in place even though his hands were shaking. I helped him through the hospital, out the door, and back into the van, where Kanzel still sat in the driver's seat. I told him to drive us to my place, even though my car was still back at the office. Fucked if I was going back there when my shift had ended ten minutes ago. I'd pick the damned car up in the morning. 

Home wasn't much, really—a row house at one end of a block of the same. With Val leaning on my arm, I unlocked the front door, helped him inside, and kicked my muddy boots off without using my hands. Val's shoes were an equal mess, but . . . 

When he saw me looking at them, he muttered something, and a faint light glittered around him, cleansing his clothes of muck . . . and then his eyes rolled up and he seemed to lose consciousness. Fortunately I'd had my arm around him, so he didn't fall over, but he did go awkwardly limp in my grasp. 

"Idiot," I muttered. "I could have cleaned up a little dirt." 

There were streaks of white in his hair, I noted as I swung him up into my arms. Where had those come from? I would have sworn he hadn't had them up at old man Axel's. They made him look older, at the same time as the sudden relaxation of his face made him look younger. The result could only be described as ageless. Then again, if he had enough dragon blood to actually have wings, he was probably a lot older than he looked. 

He was heavier than I would have expected, even though he'd been leaning on me for a while now. I hadn't realized how much of his own weight he'd still been taking. Now I had to handle it all as I hauled him upstairs. 

I wasn't sure whether the bed in the guest room had any sheets on it—really, why would it have?—but there was a blanket over the mattress, so I just laid him on top, clothes and all. I meant to get another blanket from the hall closet to cover him over, but he'd somehow gotten a grip on my coat again, even though he was sound asleep, and I ended up skinning out of that and covering him over with it instead. It seemed to be the right thing to do, because he smiled in his sleep and snuggled into it, burying his face in the collar. 

I got a blanket anyway and draped it over the lot. Then I stood there for a moment, just looking at him, even though I should have been stripping out of my sweaty clothes and heading for the shower. 

_What in hell am I going to do with you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention that the medical stuff here doesn't necessarily resemble anything in the real world either? I don't tend to do more than superficial research for fanfic (unless something piques my interest and I disappear into Wikipedia for a few hours).
> 
> Oh, and I've been assuming that Val is six feet tall, give or take a couple of inches, making him around a foot and a half shorter than Gaav.


	3. Dealing with Dragons

When I got up the next morning, the spare bedroom was empty. 

I stared at it, feeling a bit confused. The tangle of coat and blanket lying there proved that Val hadn't been a dream, and anyway I'd looked in on him a couple of times the previous evening and found him still cuddled up with the coat, but where was he now? If he'd gotten out of the house . . . _Shit._

I went downstairs and immediately breathed a sigh of relief: there he was, in the living room, sprawled on the couch and flipping through an atlas, of all things. He set it aside and sat up as soon as he saw me, and said something. I couldn't make heads or tails of the meaning, of course, but it sounded like a greeting. 

"Morning," I said. "I should do something about breakfast, I guess." I didn't really eat a lot, considering my size, but Doctor Raada had as much as said that Val needed to gain ten pounds or so, and maybe she was right. There was solid muscle under those weird clothes of his, but no extra at all. "I'm not much of a cook, but I can probably manage toast." 

Val seemed to find the toaster fascinating—not surprising, when he'd probably never seen anything like it before—but wasn't impressed by the bread. Not that I blamed him. The stuff probably had enough preservatives in it to embalm an entire cemetery. Strawberry jam helped it along a bit. 

Then came the dilemma about what to do with Val while I was at work. If I left him at the house, I wouldn't be able to keep an eye on him, but if I brought him with me, I wasn't sure where I would put him, and either way he'd probably be bored stiff. He solved the problem for me by following me to the door, and then out of it. He could be bored at the office with me, then. 

It was a good stiff walk, a little more than a mile, with our breath clouding the air. Val didn't seem bothered by the cold this time. In fact, he was grinning again as he strode easily alongside me, the same sharp-edged grin I remembered from the fight yesterday. The streaks of white were gone from his hair, too. I hoped that that was a good sign. 

I'd almost stopped noticing how odd he looked, what with the clothes and the horn and the odd hairstyle that looked more suited to a member of one of the bands Alya was fascinated by than a . . . whatever Val was. It felt almost as though he'd always been there, by my side, keeping pace in comfortable silence with whatever I chose to do. Of course, the rest of the county hadn't gotten the memo. The people we passed in the streets stared at us. In fact, one middle-aged jogger stared so hard that she ran into a utility pole and just about knocked herself out, the idiot. 

We got to the office just as Mazenda and Kanzel were swapping places with the lone deputy who manned the office during the graveyard shift and had the unenviable job of calling to wake the rest of us up if something really serious happened. East Sairaag County wasn't very big or overly populated—fifteen thousand people split between one town barely worthy of the name and several villages, with a roughly triangular shape that always reminded me of a clown hat—and the sheriff's department consisted of me, six deputies, and Mazenda. 

"Morning, Boss," Kanzel said as he poured two cups of coffee. "Morning, Val." He didn't ask why Val was with me, which surprised me a bit, but I couldn't exactly ask him about it. 

Mazenda muttered something that was probably supposed to be "Morning" but sounded more like "Mumblety-peg". When Kanzel shoved her mug under her nose, she grabbed onto it as though she thought it was the Elixir of Life or something. Mazenda first thing in the morning was the closest thing to a fucking zombie that I ever wanted to see. 

"Anything interesting happen overnight?" I asked. 

Kanzel shrugged. "Seigram said it was pretty quiet, and that Dilgear told him the same—just the usual shit at the bars near the city limits at two in the morning when they had to start tossing the drunks out." 

"Hmph. I'll be in my office." 

Mazenda waved a hand in acknowledgment. I barely had time to take a step before the outside door to the office opened, though, and four people crowded in. Two of them I recognized: Matt, the graduate student from the day before, and Professor Zeldon Greywords. 

He looked a lot like a shorter, late-middle-aged version of his ancestor Rezo the Red Priest, according to a couple of statues that had survived the Plague Years. I just thought the way his grey hair always stuck out to the sides looked fucking silly, although I'd never come right out and said it. Between the hair and the fact that he had one dark brown eye and one gold one with an odd, slit pupil, he was difficult to mistake for anyone else. He and Kanzel were actually something like eighth cousins, both tracing their families back to Rezo's chimera grandson and the queen he'd married—something Kanzel would complain about at length if you got him drunk enough, although he never made enough sense for me to figure out what had caused the split between the two branches of the family. Not that I cared all that much. 

One of the other two men had to be a professor of something too, because there was no way anyone but an academic would wear a fucking tweed jacket in public in this day and age. Other than that, he had greying dark hair that was thinning in the front, a massive mustache, and the kind of face that I hated when I had to take witness statements, because it was so fucking average that no one would remember anything about it unless he happened to look like their Uncle Floyd. Except that mustache, in his case. 

The fourth man was wearing a sharp grey pinstriped suit with a blue and pink tie, and I disliked him on sight. He was just a little too slick, in a way that I associated with salesmen and organized crime. The pleasant expression on his face was as fake as the plastic plant beside Mazenda's desk—you just had to look at his eyes to tell. 

"You would be Val, I take it," the fourth man said, and the guy in the tweed jacket said . . . something. Had they actually managed to find a translator for Northern Common? Val smirked and said something back. 

"He says my accent is atrocious," Tweed-Jacket reported. Professor Greywords snorted. 

"Are you going to introduce yourselves, or are we supposed to guess?" I asked. _In which case I'll call you Rumplestiltskin and Guido, respectively._ Not that anyone had ever taken me up on the guessing part. I was a bit surprised to hear Tweed-Jacket translating for me, but not to see Val's smirk widen after he did. 

Sharp-And-Slick scowled. 

"My apologies," Professor Greywords said. "This gentleman is Laus Zoamel Zoana, dean of Sairaag University's Faculty of History and Archaeology." That was Sharp-And-Slick. "And Professor Alfred Sinian, a colleague from the Linguistics department who specializes in dead languages." Tweed-Jacket offered us a slight bow. "Gentlemen, this is Val, and Sheriff Gavin Drakkon." I nodded politely. 

"Our business isn't with some oversized idiot who _destroyed_ an archaeological site," Zoana snapped. 

"I _touched_ a spell that had been there for hundreds of years, and it fell apart," I said, forcing my voice to stay even when what I wanted was to break this arrogant little fucker's head open and throw him out of my office. I'd end up in jail for it, but he'd still have the skull fracture to remember me by. Only the knowledge that I couldn't _afford_ to spend the next several years cooling my heels in a fucking cell restrained me. "I still don't know why it reacted differently to me than to your kid over there." 

"You're _surprised_ that the spell reacted freakishly to a freak like you? But then, you've surrounded yourself with so many of your own kind that maybe you've managed to convince yourself that you're _normal_." 

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees even though it was crowded. Matt winced, and after the half-beat needed for Sinian to complete his translation, Val _growled_ , a low, dangerous sound. 

"You weren't supposed to translate that!" Zoana snapped. 

Sinian blinked mildly. "It would have been dishonest not to." 

"You idiot!" 

I held up my hand. "Let's move this into my office—we should all just about fit if the kid stays out here. Unless you _want_ everyone in town to know what you've got to say." Mazenda was a bit of a gossip, and none of this was official business, so she was free to talk about it if she wanted to, and knew it. 

There were three chairs on the "visitor" side of my desk, and Zoana immediately took the best one. I think he might have wanted to take _my_ chair, but he must have noticed that it had been custom-built for me and would have left his feet dangling like a little kid's. To my surprise, it was Val who chose to stay standing—as soon as I sat down myself, he planted himself at my shoulder and didn't move as Greywords and Sinian took the other two chairs. 

"We have two reasons for our visit this morning," Greywords said. "First, to hear your version—and Val's, if he'll agree to tell us—of what happened yesterday, and secondly to . . . make our guest from the past an offer." 

Val spoke. "'Go ahead and get it out of your systems, then,'" Sinian translated. 

"Thank you," Greywords said. "Now . . . sheriff, you said you only touched the barrier that was in place inside the buried room?" 

I nodded. "Tips of the fingers and thumb of my left hand. It felt solid for a split second, then it . . . rippled, I guess you would say, and broke." 

"Hmm." 

"I still think it's because it wasn't designed to withstand contact with non-humans—it was probably defeated by your troll ancestry," Zoana said, giving me another nasty look. 

"I don't have any troll blood," I replied mildly . . . and cracked my knuckles. 

"Then what the hell are you? Ogre? Brass demon?" 

"No one knows. Including me." Zoana looked like he was about to explode, so I added, in the hope that it would shut him up, "Let me tell you a story. About fifty years ago, a husband and wife lived in one of the far southern kingdoms. Let's call them Abe and Bea." Greywords snorted, but then he'd heard it all before. "They wanted kids pretty badly, but after trying for a couple of years, Bea still wasn't pregnant, so they went to a fertility clinic. Nine months or so later, Bea was delivered of twins, a boy and a girl. There was just one problem: Abe and Bea were short, round, brown people like their parents and grandparents, and their son was a big blue-eyed redhead. So they sent a blood sample for genetic testing, and ended up putting the fertility lab out of business." 

Zoana snorted. "So your mother's husband wasn't your father. I fail to see how that could keep them from getting racial information out of the analysis." 

"Oh, no, it was much worse than that. Much, _much_ worse. Not only did it turn out that I was no fucking relation to _either_ of them, but the gene lab couldn't match me with anyone else who had used the clinic either. They only did a rough breakdown, but it turns out I'm fifty-three percent human, somewhere between eleven and fourteen percent dragon, although they weren't sure what _kind_ of dragon, and between thirty-three and thirty-six percent we-have-no-fucking-clue. And the human part of me has no near relatives that they could trace. The best guess anyone has is that I'm some kind of pre-Plague hybridization experiment that _somehow_ got mixed into the clinic's samples." And I shrugged, wondering just how many people I'd told that story to now. It didn't matter all that much—my nature was obvious from looking at me, and I'd broken all ties to the couple who weren't really called "Abe" and "Bea" when I'd changed my name and left the country where I'd grown up. Easier that way. And anyway, although they'd done their best by me, there was still one thing I resented them for: who fucking calls their kid _Alphonse_ , anyway? I'd spent some time flipping through one of those stupid baby-name books trying to find something that felt right to call myself by. _Gavin_ had been the best I'd found, but almost anything would have been better than that thing they'd put on my birth certificate. 

Someone squeezed my shoulder gently, and I was surprised-not-surprised to look up and find Val's hand resting there. Not-surprised because he'd been the only person in a position to touch me there, but the expression on his face was sober, and in those molten gold eyes . . . 

"It's okay," I said out loud. "I'm used to it." 

Sinian translated. Val nodded, but his hand stayed where it was. 

"So anyway," I continued, "that's what happened to your 'archaeological site'. You could try to get me charged with some flavour of vandalism or negligence, I suppose, but you might want to talk to a lawyer first, because I'm pretty sure you don't have much of a case." 

"As though you would have any idea." 

I gave Zoana a lazy smirk. "Part of my job involves making sure whoever we arrest has enough evidence tied to them that the courts can put them away. I know a lot about what goes on inside a courthouse." Not that it was my favourite part of my job. I was a lot happier when I had an excuse to beat up some drunk. 

Greywords was hiding his mouth behind his hand. I figured he was probably laughing his ass off. We might not exactly be friends, but he'd seen me in action before. 

"That covers that," he said, sounding just a bit muffled. "So, about the other matter . . . Val, we'd like to offer you a job." Greywords waited for Sinian to translate. Val said nothing, so he continued, "We'd like to tell us everything you can about your time—that is, the era you were born into. In return, you'll receive room and board, a salary . . . whatever you need." 

Val snorted and made a comment that sounded to me like "Fooza-kayroon-da?!" 

"'Are you joking?'" Sinian obligingly translated, although from Val's tone, I suspected "Are you fucking kidding me?!" would have been closer to what he'd actually meant. 

"I assure you, we're making the offer in good faith." Zoana said it looking like he'd bitten into a lemon. 

"Previous remarks aside," Greywords added, looking sideways at his colleague. "The offer is sincere, and, well . . . I don't know how much you've seen of the world as it's become yet, but you need identification documents and some way of making a living." 

"'And I should trust you to offer me those things?'" Val asked. "'You know, I'm not so stupid that I can't identify a rush to take advantage of someone operating in ignorance. Until I learn enough of this octopus-ese you're all speaking that I can be sure of what I'm doing, I'm not entering into a contract with anyone. And even if I were in dire need of a place, I wouldn't accept one as your encyclopedia of the past. I don't have any interest in doing a job like that.'" 

"And you intend to sleep on the streets in the meanwhile?" Zoana said. 

"He's staying with me." By now, Zoana should have figured out that I only used that mild tone when I was messing with people. Or maybe he wasn't that bright. 

"'Lord Gavin has been more than generous,'" Val said. 

I gave Sinian a Look. "Did he really just call me ' _Lord_ Gavin'?" 

The academic fidgeted with the lapels of that damned tweed jacket. "More or less. It doesn't translate very well, since the system of honourifics in Northern Common mostly indicates relative rank, rather than absolute rank the way our modern system of titles does, but the term he used for you was one of utmost respect that's usually rendered as 'Lord' or 'Master'. He seems to be very impressed with you." 

"Huh." _Lord Gavin,_ I repeated to myself, wondering why that felt oddly right. Did part of me think I should be running the fucking country or something? _Not that I could do a worse job than the current crop of political idiots._ "Val is welcome to stay with me for as long as he wants." I hoped I was doing the right thing. I hadn't even known him a whole day yet, and for most of that he'd been asleep. He might be a drunk, or dangerously insane in some subtle way . . . but I didn't think so. I should have been careful, hesitant, double- and triple-checking everything to make sure Alya would be safe, but there was just something about Val, something that made me feel like he belonged in my life. Something that made me sure I'd miss him if he left. 

I was looking up at him as Sinian translated, so I was able to see the smile, that warm, exhausted, surrendering smile he'd shown me yesterday, break briefly across his face again. 

"So that's settled," I said, turning back toward the party from the university. "You . . . Sinian, right? Since you speak Northern Common or whatever it is, I assume there must be some information out there about the language—dictionaries, and such. I want whatever you can get me. I'll pay for it, if necessary." Since I couldn't keep the professor in my pocket and Val was no doubt just as tired as I was of having to communicate mostly by hand signals. 

Sinian frowned. "Hmm. We aren't teaching the introductory course this term, so I don't think we have any extra copies of the texts on hand . . . It'll take at least a week to get anything sent from Seyruun University Press . . ." 

"A week from now is fine." Since it seemed like the delay wasn't anything he could fix. 

"All right, then. I'll have them send you the bill." 

"Well, then, I suppose we're done here," I said, and smirked. "Nice meeting you gentlemen. I'm sure you can show yourselves out." 

Zoana was starting to turn purple again. It was a good colour on him, and my fingers were itching to beat it into his face. I settled for cracking my knuckles again, knowing I wouldn't be able to follow up the verbal sparring with a little violence for stress relief this time, either. 

I really hated the modern era sometimes. In the period Val came from, I'd have been able to find myself a job that involved more fighting than just the occasional punch-out, but currently the world was so peaceful that even soldiers spent more time shining their fucking boots than doing anything that resembled combat. 

There were nights when I dreamed of war, of the weight of a sword in my hands, of swinging it and laughing as I mowed down ordinary humans and blood fountained everywhere. Sometimes, for the first few seconds after I woke up, I wouldn't be able to figure out where I was. Sometimes I'd be convinced that _this_ life was a dream, until something pulled me back into myself. 

There was a theory of my origins that I'd never shared with anyone: that I was, not a pre-Plague experiment, but a military one. I only seemed to feel truly alive when I was fighting, so maybe I'd been made for it, and who else would have any use for a combat chimera? But there was no fucking way I was going back to the miserable country where I'd been born just to try to find out. 

"Um . . . boss?" Kanzel poked his head into the room. The trio of professors still hadn't moved. 

"What _now_?" I growled. 

"Um, Dinan just called in to say that he'd found . . ." 

"Found _what_?" I was rapidly running out of patience, not that I had much of it at the best of times. 

"Old man Axel's body."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaav really does not look like an Alphonse. ::snicker::
> 
> The Japanese phrase Val uses is usually transcribed as "Fuzakeru n'da?!" Unlike the romanization, the translation given is more-or-less accurate.


	4. A Challenge from the Astral Plane

"What the fuck is this?" 

Okay, so I'd been expecting gory. Dinan's semi-coherent comments over the radio had given me that much. I hadn't been expecting anything quite like this, though. 

Old man Axel's body seemed to have been taken apart with exquisite care, as had those of his dogs. The pieces had then been laid out as though to form a sort of . . . composite man-dog thing with twelve limbs, two tails, and three heads. The blood—nearly all the blood, because there was none spattered on his living room carpet, and I doubted there was any left in the bodies—filled a large pot sitting beside the TV. 

"Someone's idea of a joke," said a dull, low voice. "Except that it isn't funny." 

I'd never liked Kerth Vrumugun much, but there'd been even less competition for the position of county coroner/forensic expert than for Mazenda's dispatcher job, so I was stuck with him. Right now he had a pair of latex gloves on and was holding up a hunk of dog meat for a closer look. 

"Odd," he muttered. 

"What?" I was fucking tired of prying information out of tight-lipped people already, and I was barely an hour into my morning shift. 

"All of it." Vrumugun set down the chunk of meat and sat back on his heels. "The initial dismemberment occurred before death in all cases. Whoever did this used tourniquets to keep them from bleeding out before he was ready—the ligature marks are still clearly visible. The proximate cause of death was blood loss, and the dogs died first. I'll check the remains for drugs, but it's my belief that the victim was conscious while this was going on." 

Dinan gagged, went green, and ran out of the room for the third time since I'd arrived. Val, who had brought himself along by following me into the van and shaking his head stubbornly when I tried to convince him to leave, just stared at the body parts with a grim, unchanged expression. Then again, there was no way he could possibly understand what Vrumugun had just said. 

I grimaced. At this point, Val should have been my main suspect in this case—he was new in town and he had a connection, however weak, to the victim—but my gut insisted that it wasn't him. 

"Any idea about the time of death?" I asked. 

"My initial estimate would be that it took place roughly twelve hours ago. That assumes the temperature in the room has been constant since yesterday evening." 

When Val had been asleep in my guest room with me checking on him periodically. Not the world's greatest alibi, but it was a good enough excuse to cross him off my suspect list for now. Of course, that left the fucking thing blank. I was going to have to put Mazenda on researching old Axel—we paid for that damned office Internet connection for a reason, after all. He had a niece living somewhere in . . . Elmekia? Or had it been a nephew? And that was all I could remember. Not very fucking useful. 

Now Val was crouching beside the corpse, scowling at it. He wasn't touching anything, although I wasn't sure whether he actually understood crime scene discipline, didn't want to get his hands dirty, or was just imitating me—I couldn't get disposable gloves big enough to fit, so I kept my hands in my pockets and handled anything I really had to touch with an old-fashioned handkerchief or a plastic bag or both, depending on exactly what kind of contamination we were worried about. 

" _Mazoku,_ " Val said, sounding disgusted. He straightened up and directed his scowl down at the corpse again, as though daring it to get up and take a swing at him. 

"Mazoku?" I repeated, questioningly. Was he really trying to tell me that the old man had been killed by devils? Those wolf things might have been unnatural and unpleasant, but they hadn't been smart enough to do anything like this, or at least I didn't think so. 

Val pointed at the corpse, drew his hand across his throat, and said " _Mazoku_ " again. Pointed at the corpse, made an eating gesture, and " _Mazoku_ ". And finished up by sighing in exasperation. I didn't blame him. But I'd done some reading on the Internet last night, and I thought I knew what he might be getting at. 

Mazoku supposedly fed off negative emotional energy—hatred, fear, pain, and so on. Someone being tortured to death must have been a real feast. Hell, it was almost as though I could feel the residue of the energies involved myself, a weird dark thrill tickling my nerves and making me restless. 

"Tell Dinan to dust for prints once his stomach's empty. And have him check for anything that might be the murder weapon," I added to Vrumugun, who nodded and returned to contemplating the corpse. "Oh, and . . . do you know how to check for magic being used on something?" 

That made the dour man look up. "I know the procedure. I've never needed to use it. On the body?" 

"The body, the pot of blood, and the weapon if Dinan finds anything likely." Although I was pretty sure he wouldn't. 

"Understood," Vrumugun said. 

Val followed me out of the house. Or at least, he followed me to the bottom of the front steps, then walked on past me when I paused, hands balled into fists. 

There was a dead tree, grey and barkless, standing in lonely splendour in the middle of a piece of empty, lumpy land between the farmyard and the dirt road. Val stopped in front of it and began a muttered monologue, muscles tense and shaking. His voice rose quickly from a mutter to a shout, and he punched the dead wood, splintering it. A kick, another punch, and the tree went over, roots tearing out of the frozen ground. 

By then, I'd gotten close enough to grab his shoulder. "Val . . ." 

He spun around, hands still clenched into fists. His expression was disturbing, not because of the way his mouth was twisted with anger, but because of the flat emptiness of those golden eyes. His pupils—slit like a cat's, and why hadn't I noticed that before?—had contracted to fine black lines, and I wasn't sure he was seeing anything at all. 

"Val!" I repeated, putting some firmness into my voice. "Calm down." He should be able to get tone even if he couldn't understand the words, right? 

There was a moment of frozen nothing, and then with a sound almost like a sob, he lurched forward, wrapped his arms around my waist, and hung on like a fucking limpet, pressing the side of his face against the front of my coat and shaking. 

Very, very slowly, I slid my arms around him, too, like I might have done for Alya. It made me feel uncomfortably exposed. It always did. But I did it anyway. And after a while, his breathing began to even out and the shaking stopped. 

I think it was a couple of minutes later that he pulled loose from me, muttering something that sounded like "Go men," although I was pretty sure he meant something else entirely. His face was flushed, and he looked down at the ground as he added, " _Ah-ree-gah-toe,_ " or something like that, obviously embarrassed. 

"It's fine," I said. "We'll go up to the university this afternoon, and dig up Professor Sinian so he can translate your explanation of whatever the fuck happened there." I should be able to excuse it as work-time on the grounds that Val appeared to know something about the murder, or thought he did. "We'll squeeze in some clothes-shopping first, though." _So much for lunch._ You'd have thought I wouldn't have much appetite for it, but gore didn't bother me. It never had. And Val hadn't seemed like he was about to toss his cookies either, even if he hadn't exactly been on an even keel. 

"Sinian," he said now, with a nod, and an expression that said he wished he could talk to me as much as I wished I could talk to him. 

We ended up grabbing a couple of burgers from the food court in the mall at the edge of Sairaag proper before hitting the stores. Val in a plain T-shirt, chinos, and a leather jacket stood out a bit less than Val in his jacket-vest and capelet, but the horn and the hair were still . . . obvious and distinctive. The stares did go down to about the level I got myself, though, and I figured that was acceptable. 

Back at the sheriff's office, Kanzel was booking some punk kid he'd caught getting fresh with a highway underpass and a can of spray paint, and Mazenda said nothing much interesting had happened and no, Vrumugun hadn't called in to talk about his findings yet. 

"Nice jacket, by the way, Val," the dispatcher added. "You look kind of sexy dressed like a normal person. Better not let him get away, boss!" 

It took me a moment to understand what she was implying. "He's just my _houseguest_ , Mazenda." I slammed my hand down on her desk, just hard enough to make it rattle without breaking it again: emphasis and threat. "And if _any_ rumours saying otherwise escape from this office, I'm going to make you wish you'd never fucking been born!" 

Mazenda winced. "Sorry, boss—I honestly didn't mean it that way. It's just that the two of you . . . look _right_ together somehow. Kanzel thinks so too." 

"You leave me out of this," her boyfriend retorted, as he came up the stairs from the half-basement where we hid our two-cell jail. 

I glanced at Val, who was observing all this intently even though he couldn't understand a damned word. _He_ feels _right,_ I admitted. Like he should have been there all along. It was so fucking weird . . . 

"Let's go," I told him, beckoning. I really wanted to know what that crap up at the farm was all about. 

We took my car this time instead of the van, and since it wasn't actually raining or snowing, I left the top down despite the bite in the air. Val didn't seem to mind. In fact, when we pulled onto the freeway and started to gather speed, I saw him grin that sharp-edged grin of his. 

It pissed me off that I had to drive like a fucking arthritic granny, but the fucking car was like so many other things that I owned: carefully chosen to accommodate my size, with huge amounts of money and time poured into maintaining it because replacing it would be even more of a pain. I couldn't afford to total it. 

I got lost twice on the campus, and then when I found what I thought was the right building, had to backtrack to look for parking. And then hike back to the building again. There was one bright side to being there, though—almost no one stared at Val for more than a couple of seconds. They might even have thought he was a student himself, one with an unfortunate fashion sense that involved gluing a horn to his head. Unlike me, they hadn't felt the side of the damned thing pressed against them and figured out that it really was fixed to his skull. 

Sinian's office was a little cubby on the third floor, with every horizontal surface drowning under books and papers, including the chairs and the windowsill. He looked up as we eased our way through the open door, and blinked at us. 

"Sheriff Drakkon. I didn't expect to see you again, or at least not so soon." And something incomprehensible to Val, who nodded. 

I grimaced. "Val followed me to a crime scene this morning, and I think he may know more about what happened there than he can communicate with hand gestures. Since I've got a corpse on my hands and no witnesses, I'm clutching at straws." 

Sinian paled. "Oh." He stared into space for a moment, until Val said something sharp to him, probably a request to translate, because it set off a couple of incomprehensible sentences. 

When Sinian wound down again, I said, "Ask him why he thought Mazoku were involved." 

"'First, because the entire room was full of residual black magic,'" Val said through Sinian. "'Second, because of the pot of blood. There's a spell that even weak Mazoku can use to take on a form human enough to pass, but it needs a lot of blood, ideally human, to use as a template for the body. My guess is that we're dealing with one of Dynast's lesser servants, sent to keep an eye on me and make certain I was never again in a position to stir up any trouble.'" 

I raised my eyebrows. "Trouble? You?" 

Val smirked. "'I've been a thorn in their collective side since a couple of centuries after the Kouma War, and believe me, I'm proud of it.'" 

I could feel the expression on my face shifting to match his, in response to the fearless look in those golden eyes. Val really was a kindred spirit, the first I'd ever found. 

"'For what it's worth, we're not likely to get another body any time soon,'" Val continued. "'Once the spell is in place, it's permanent until it's specifically reversed. Unfortunately, without knowing for certain what this particular Mazoku's mission is, it's difficult to tell what else he might try to do. They prefer to be subtle when they can.'" 

"So you're saying that this one is more than likely to end up on the books as unsolved, with no suspects and no leads," I said. "I can live with that, so long as no one kicks up too much of a fuss about it." To be more accurate, I didn't really give a flying fuck whether we ever found the old man's killer or not, if he wasn't going to kill again. I'd never enjoyed the investigative part of police work, and abstract notions of right and wrong had never done much for me either. "Now, do you mind telling me why you hauled off and fucked up that tree?" 

Val winced. "'I apologize for that. Normally, I have better control. Something about what I saw there triggered a flashback, the first one I've had for a very long time. Instead of just one old human and a couple of dogs, I was seeing dead dragons—my family and clan. I managed to keep some contact with reality until I could take it out on that tree.'" 

_Shit. That's just great._ So I'd invited a purebred dragon with post-traumatic stress disorder into my house for an indefinite stay. And I still couldn't bring myself to feel I'd done the wrong thing. 

"Your family was killed by Mazoku?" I asked. 

Val shook his head. "'By other dragons. And not just my family, but my entire race. Slaughtered down to the last hatchling, all the eggs smashed where they lay . . .'" His hands had balled into fists again . . . then he forced one to relax, with a visible effort, and put it on my arm instead. I could feel his fingers digging in, but I bore with it—I'm pretty durable. "'And then they did their best to erase us from history, so that no one would ever find out that the priesthood of the Fire Dragon King was composed of flaming hypocrites who thought it was acceptable to commit genocide to further their own agenda.'" 

Sinian was white again. "I didn't even know I _knew_ the word for 'genocide' in Common," he said in his own persona. " _Ceiphied,_ that's . . ." 

"A long time ago," I said. _For everyone except Val._

Val said something, and nudged Sinian's shoulder. 

"'The memories have gotten less intense with time,'" came the translation. "'Mostly. Now, I have something to ask you: What did Mazenda say to you right before we left that got you so grumpy?'" 

Fuck it all, was it hot in here? "She implied we were . . . romantically involved." 

Val raised his eyebrows. "'And I'm so unattractive to you that even bringing up the idea makes you try to destroy the furniture?'" 

"And I've barely known you one day and I'm not in the market for a quick fuck," I growled. "It makes it sound like I don't have any self-discipline." 

Val's only reply was a "hm" that transcended language. Just as well, because Sinian looked like he wanted to hide under the carpet by the time he'd finished translating my words. 

_Did_ I find Val attractive? I wondered as we left Sinian's office. He sure as hell didn't resemble anyone I'd ever slept with before. I wasn't sure he resembled anyone I'd ever _known_ before, even if I didn't take the horn into account. So many scars, and yet they didn't seem to slow him down. And those golden eyes, and that fearless grin. I shook my head. I couldn't seem to separate my impressions of his body from those I'd formed of his personality. 

Attractive? Fucked if I knew, but he was definitely _fascinating_. Brilliant and broken and quite possibly insane, but strong and proud despite it. And the thought that we were alike in some indefinable way flickered through my mind again. 

_Fuck, Mazenda, why did you have to go and plant an idea like that in my head?_


	5. Through a Thin Haze

_"Eris . . ."_

_"Gavin, I can't do this anymore."_

_"Neither can I." The words tasted bitter on my tongue, a flavour never forgotten. I wasn't even angry at her anymore. I'd tried angry, and just ended up shaking with the effort I needed to exert to keep myself from hitting her. If I'd let myself give in, I might have ended up killing her—by accident? On purpose? I didn't know. I was just so damned tired of the whole thing and wanted it to go away._

_Had I ever loved my ex-wife? All things considered, I was pretty sure I hadn't. I'd let her catch me on the rebound from her fiance's death because marrying a pretty girl was something a normal man would_ want _to do, wasn't it? What a fucking stupid idea. The last vestiges of an adolescent need to fit in. Or maybe just a mid-life crisis, given the timing. How the fuck was I supposed to know?_

_She was saying something about wanting to study biology to bring her old boyfriend back, of all the idiotic crap. I didn't care. My mind was already clicking over into practical mode._

_"We'll sell the house and split the money," I said. "Alya . . ."_

_I would swear I saw a flash of hatred in her eyes when I mentioned the name of the little girl who was legally our daughter even though she was no true relation to me at all._

_"You can have her," the bitch said with all the cold poison I knew she was capable of._

_"Just as well," I snapped. "She'd fucking well be better off_ dead _than with you."_

_Eris opened her mouth to say something else, another well-worn and familiar line, but no sound came out. Even the rain that had been lashing against the window as though to underscore our argument had gone quiet, and the kitchen of the house we'd once shared was going transparent around me. So was Eris, for that matter._

_"She knew you were never intended for her." Val's voice, and suddenly he was standing there, the only solid thing in a wavering mass of indefinite greyness, dressed in his old clothes. "And she didn't deserve you. Not in_ any _way."_

_He smirked, and suddenly we were both naked. I seemed unable to move as he stepped forward and put his arms around me. And then he leaned up and somehow the difference in our heights didn't matter as he tilted his head and drew me in for a kiss._

_He wasn't a passive kisser. He knew what he wanted, and he worked for it, coaxing my tongue into his mouth, eyes slitted with pleasure. And he was the one who broke off first, leaning back without letting go of me._

_"No mere human could ever handle you," he said with that hard-edged grin. "They're too fragile. And maybe they sense a bit of what you really are, like any other prey animal presented with a predator. But_ I _know, and I'm not afraid. We're the same, after all."_

_"Val . . ." Sometime during the kiss, I'd gotten both my hands on his body, and my fingers were tracing his scars. I followed the curved lines of his shoulderblades, and suddenly he cried out, back arching as feathered wings the colour of shadow burst from his shoulders._

_He chuckled. "It's all still there in your body, isn't it, even if you're not consciously aware." He flexed his wings, spread them wider. "I've missed this so much," he said, voice softening as he rubbed his body quite deliberately against mine. Which meant against my crotch. I shuddered as I felt myself begin to harden. "Only you . . ."_

_"You're not making any sense," I grumbled._

_"No, I suppose I'm not," he admitted. "Let's make it simple, then. I want you." Another kiss, hot and hard. "I want your body." Hands ran slowly over the muscles of my torso. "I want your cock." He closed his hand around it, squeezing gently—_

—and the dream shattered, leaving me with a raging hard-on. 

"Dragons don't have feathered wings," I grumbled at the empty bedroom as I reached under the covers to take myself in hand, but there was a picture in my mind now that just wouldn't go away: Val on his back, with his wings stretched out to either side, his legs spread wide to welcome me . . . and that smirk on his face. _Take me if you dare._ I groaned, hand moving faster as I gave up and let my mind wander freely, remembering how he'd tasted in my dream, wondering how it would feel . . . warm and tight and his fingers digging into my back, the sound of his voice, desperate and gasping as he begged me for _more_ and _faster_ and _harder_ . . . _Oh, Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye . . ._ "Val," I whispered. " _My_ Val . . ." Something possessive flared inside me then, something irrational, and I growled, a deep rumbling sound that I would swear had never come from my throat before, and came so hard I was surprised I hadn't left a hole in the blankets. 

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_ I asked myself as I disentangled myself from the bedding and staggered toward the ensuite bathroom to clean up. All my life, I'd been weirdly undersexed for someone who clearly had enough testosterone in his bloodstream for two normal men, and now a couple of questionable comments and a single dream and I was losing it. 

I wanted inside Val's pants. Lying to myself about it wasn't going to do any good. Okay, so I'd never had a man in my bed before, but that was more because I'd never been approached by another male than because I cared how my partner's plumbing was arranged. I could imagine myself touching his cock, squeezing it and stroking it and the noises he'd make as my touch made him come . . . 

Val might not even want anything to do with me. I reminded myself of that over and over again as I went mechanically through the process of washing and drying my hands. There was no reason to read any kind of innuendo into what he'd said in Sinian's office. It could easily have been just a joke. But . . . 

_Mine,_ growled some stubborn part of my subconscious. _Mine, mine, MINE!_

I sighed. This was going to be a pain. Going sex-crazy as a teenager is one thing. It isn't supposed to suddenly happen when you're forty-eight. Of course, for all I knew, the nonhuman parts of me were just now hitting puberty. 

I thought burning off some energy might help, so even though it wasn't quite dawn yet and the temperature was probably below freezing, I put on some sweats and went outside. Stretches first, feeling goosebumps forming on my skin . . . _so much for warming up_. Then I went to work, punching and kicking the air. 

Phantom opponents suck, really, but I didn't have a hell of a lot of alternatives. I'd hospitalized a couple of other guys at the police academy I'd attended, including a new instructor who hadn't believed it when he'd been told just how strong I was. Even when I was _trying_ to pull my punches, I sometimes broke bone. When I _didn't_ pull them, I shattered it. Punching bags fell apart under my hands. I'd once picked up a compact car some idiot had double-parked beside my convertible, carried it to the other side of the street, and carefully deposited it upside-down in an empty parking spot. _Maybe I should take a page from Val's book, and turn some trees into firewood._

Which was why I was kind of surprised when a lean figure slid in and blocked one of my punches with his hand, then aimed a return kick at me that I only partly managed to dodge. I was going to have a nice bruise on my leg to match the fingerprints he'd left on my arm yesterday, but I didn't really give a damn. Val was grinning that edged grin at me, and his eyes were on fire with battle-lust . . . and he clearly still had the use of the hand that I'd hit at full force. _Okay, then. If you want a fight, I'll give you a fight._ And I smirked back at him and took a swing at his head. 

He dodged, not even moving his feet, just bending smoothly at the waist, then whipping around and using the lean to help counterbalance another kick. _Fuck, he's fast._ And stronger than any human or beastman I had ever met. And he seemed to be able to read my mind, knowing what I was going to do before _I_ did, sometimes. As the exchange of blows developed, he made me aware that I'd gotten rusty, just taking on inept young men who were stupid enough to cross me. Val shamelessly took advantage of every opening I left, leaving a pattern of marks along my ribs and down my forearms that was going to be black-and-blue in pretty short order. I landed a few punches myself, but not nearly as many as he succeeded in getting on me—he was just too damned quick. I'd never _needed_ to be fast before. 

But fucking _hell_ , I wasn't just going to let him win. _Faster,_ I told myself. _Faster, faster, faster!_ I drove myself as hard as I could, letting his punches rock me as I focused on speed, on trimming wasted motion from my swings. It took several minutes of experimentation, but I started to connect more often. Still, it wasn't going to be enough to win. Val was good. I needed _strategy_. He had to have a weakness—where was it? 

I caught his next punch with an open hand, the way he'd done with that first one of mine, hoping to pin him down for a fraction of a second while I thought. I couldn't beat him on speed, but how about on sheer power? 

Instead of sidestepping his next attack or trying to block it, I stepped into it, feeling his knuckles skid along my shoulder—another nice bruise there—and grabbed him in a bear hug, squeezing hard. Val grunted, and I waited for the half-expected headbutt, but instead I felt something small and hard pressing against my throat. It felt like the tip of a pencil, or . . . _his horn?_ I found myself laughing. _I should have known it wasn't just decorative._

"You'd open my throat before I could manage to crush you completely, so I guess you won this round," I said, letting him go. "But next time, I'm not going to lose." Maybe he'd get a bit of it from the tone, anyway. 

We'd been at it for nearly an hour, and dawn had long since broken, making the bare bushes around the edge of the yard throw long shadows. Now that I'd stopped moving, I realized again just how fucking cold it was. A hint of a breeze bit into my hair, damp with sweat. Val muttered something that sounded like it might have been a curse, and gestured at the back door. I nodded and reached for the knob. I needed a shower, anyway, and then I'd see if I could scrape together something resembling breakfast before we headed to the office. Hopefully there wouldn't be any surprises at work today. 

Inside, we climbed the stairs in silence. Val paused at the door to the main bathroom and gave me a questioning look. I nodded to him, and, just in case he didn't get it, pointed at him, then through the doorway into the room. I'd use the shower in the ensuite, which had been remodeled when we'd moved in so that I had enough elbow room and didn't have to bend over double to wash my hair. 

I let the heat of the shower work the knots out of my muscles. I had to admit that Val had done a fair number on me. As I'd suspected, I had an impressive collection of marks on my arms, sides, and outer thighs, in shades of red through almost-blue, where his fists and feet had pounded into me. I was pretty sure that sparring with the dragon was the most fun I'd had in years. Fuck, I was still grinning at nothing. If the tiled wall had had eyes, it probably would have thought I'd gone crazy. 

Then I had the most disturbing thought that had crossed my mind in a very long time. _He feels right beside me, I like him, we share interests, I want in his pants . . . could I actually be falling in love? With Val? Oh, fuck . . ._

I couldn't believe it. It was like waking up one morning and discovering I'd turned into a . . . a yellow platypus. Lust at least I could understand—it was a normal physical urge, like the desire to punch someone's lights out. But this? Wanting a _partner_? I'd thought I'd gotten over that after things had soured between Eris and me. 

_But Val isn't Eris,_ some traitorous part of me said. And, even deeper down, pulsing steadily, _Mine_. 

Could this be some kind of fucking weird dragon mating instinct? I didn't know which parts of my body were affected by which segment of my genes, after all. Maybe I was responding to dragon pheromones. Next thing you knew, I'd be building a nest and waiting for the fucking eggs to come, or whatever it was that dragons did when they were trying to have kids. 

Maybe I should have my genes retested. The state of the art now was way beyond what they'd had when I was a kid. If I was really lucky, someone might even have found a sample that matched the unknown third of my inheritance. 

_I hope I don't snap and try to jump Val before Sinian's dictionaries and whatever get here. If we could talk, I might at least be able to figure out . . . whether what I seem to want was a possibility or not._

Downstairs, Val had changed his clothes and was leaning against the kitchen counter with a large mug in his hand. I frowned, giving it an intent look . . . but no, I was sure I had never seen it before. 

Then Val reached sideways into nothing and pulled out another mug, filling it from a teapot that had been behind him on the counter. He offered it to me, and I took it, although tea wasn't my usual morning drink. A cautious sip told me this batch had been stewed to spoon-melting intensity, and . . . well, it didn't taste any _worse_ than instant coffee. It would do. 

The teapot was an odd piece of work too, not quite like any other I'd ever seen. Ceramic, glazed in a swirling mixture of blues and greys, with a round-bellied basic shape and an octagonal lid. I lifted that lid to look at the underside, expecting to find it stamped with _Made in Elmekia_ or something. Instead, I found initials that had to have been cut into the clay before it had hardened. Or at least I assumed they were initials. They looked like writing, but in the angular pre-Plague script that I'd never learned to read. I was regretting that now. Anyway, I was pretty sure the damned thing was handmade, or a duplicate of a handmade original. When Val pulled something out of nowhere, was he reaching into some kind of magically-defined storage space, or just creating it out of nothing? Either way, a handy thing to be able to do. 

Come to think of it, we hadn't had any tea in the house either, and there was a glass jar of loose dried leaves sitting on the counter now. I might be drinking something hundreds of years old, although it didn't taste like it. 

So breakfast was tea and toast, and then Val followed me out to the car again. I didn't try to argue with him. Honestly, I didn't want to. Easier just to let him become a fixture at the office, if that was his idea of a good time. 

When we got there, there was a box of donuts sitting on the corner of Mazenda's desk. I eyed it with surprise—Dinan was a donut- _eating_ kind of guy, but not so much a donut- _buying_ kind of guy, Kanzel and I didn't like sweets very much, and Mazenda felt she had to watch her figure. 

"It was a gift," Mazenda said. "From our visitors." 

I frowned. "Since when do we have visitors this early?" 

"Since old man Axel died, evidently. They're waiting in your office." 

Even if Axel had had relatives who gave a damn about him, they'd have to have dropped everything to be here this soon, and while that was possible, I didn't see it as likely. Who else would be interested in his death? 

For a moment, I couldn't think of anyone. Then the light blinked on in my head. _Fuck. I hope I'm wrong._

I pushed open the door to my office with Val following close behind. There were two people already inside, one leaning against the corner of my desk, the other springing up out of one of the guest chairs. 

"Sheriff Drakkon, I presume," said the one leaning on my desk. He looked close to my age, with brown hair and heavy-lidded eyes, and wore a blue blazer. "I am Detective Inspector Wizer Freion XI, with the PBI. And this is my assistant, Emil Seyruun." 

_Oh, fuck._ Of course I'd been right. The universe wouldn't have it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why Eris? Well, it was kind of a process of elimination.
> 
> At first I had an OC slotted in as Gaav's ex-wife, but she never felt right to me, so I went back to the list of Slayers characters on Kanzakadex . . . only to discover I had a bit of a problem. The _named_ female characters in the series were almost all either so strong-willed/pushy/pain-in-the-ass-ish that I couldn't see Gaav getting involved with them at all (Lina herself, Naga, most female antagonists), or so gentle and/or obsessively good that they'd be unlikely to use the word "divorce" in a Scrabble game, much less actually get one (Amelia, Sylphiel). Rubia and Ozel were too wooden, I didn't want to fiddle too much with the human characters from the novels, I'd already used Mazenda, and trying to put Filia in there almost broke my brain.
> 
> So that pretty much left Eris—manipulative enough, but the anime also gives us a flashback or two of her being a decent person.


	6. Unwelcome People

The two PBI officers stood in front of my desk. Emil Seyruun gave Val and I a shallow bow. "Pleased to meet you, sirs." He was short, with black hair and blue eyes, and looked maybe twenty. His blazer was made of white linen, completely wrong for this area in March, and he had a lavender shirt underneath it. 

Wizer opened his mouth to speak, and I cut him off. If I wanted to keep control of the conversation, I pretty much had to. 

"Seyruun, hmm? You must be related to Kanzel, then." And to Professor Zeldon Greywords, although the likelihood of either of them ever admitting it while sober wasn't high. Anyway, the remark was enough to stall any other conversation until I got around to the other side of my desk and sat down. Val leaned back against the wall behind me and folded his arms. 

"The blue fellow we encountered on the way in?" Wizer said interestedly. "I didn't realize he was a Seyruun. He didn't stop for introductions." 

"My deputies have a job to do, Mr. Wizer. They're not supposed to spend their time sitting around the office. Now. What does the Peninsular Bureau of Investigation want with the East Sairaag County Sheriff's Department?" I leaned back in my seat, waiting. 

Wizer coughed and glanced in Val's direction. 

"Don't worry about him," I said. "He doesn't understand a word we're saying. But you can close the door if you're worried about Mazenda overhearing." Not worth worrying about, as far as I was concerned, but Wizer might think otherwise. 

Emil frowned. "It would be unjust not to let her hear . . . and yet someone else might walk in . . ." 

"Close it," Wizer said. "She can be told later, if we feel she needs to know." 

I shrugged. Mazenda was smart, and already knew they were here about Axel. She'd be able to infer anything else important. 

Emil closed the door. I looked at Wizer and raised my eyebrows, who cleared his throat. 

"Tell me, Sheriff Drakkon, just how many murders have you had in East Sairaag County in the past ten years?" 

_Okay, so he's going to be round-about._ "Three. One idiot who got knifed in a bar fight, another idiot who beat his wife until she snapped and beat _his_ head in with a rolling pin, and one I'm waiting for the forensics report on." It might be in the pile of folders resting on the end of my desk, but I doubted it—Vrumugun liked to be thorough rather than quick, and he worked alone, so I probably wouldn't get anything until around lunch time. 

"Which would be Hodge Axel," Wizer said. 

"And two of his dogs." 

"You realize that you're the primary suspect in this." 

I snorted. "Based on what?" Although I hid it, I had to admit I was a bit startled. I'd been expecting snide insinuations that we couldn't investigate our way out of a paper bag—even though Dinan was just as good at the piecing-together-clues thing as I was bad at it, which was why I kept him on staff—and should hand the case over to the PBI, not this nonsense. 

"Well, you're known for your brutality, and you were alone with the man shortly before his corpse was discovered." 

I snorted. "That barely even rises to the level of circumstantial evidence, and you know it." _And it says something about the modern world that dealing with drunk-and-disorderly in kind qualifies as brutal._ "Anything else?" 

"My intuition." 

Emil said, "But Mr. Wizer, that's very unju—" 

Wizer put his hand over his assistant's mouth. 

"Well, then, based on _my_ intuition, _you're_ the culprit. You murdered Axel to give yourself an opportunity for a splashy investigation into a hideous crime that would make yourself and the PBI look good when you 'succeed' in catching some poor sap in your frame." I smirked at him and waited for an answer. 

Wizer looked startled. "That's—" 

There was a pause. I let it go on for a while before I filled it with, "As I see it, there are three possibilities: one, you really did do it, or it was done by a friend of yours or someone who has power over you, and you want to be sure we don't find out the truth; two, you're a lazy-ass who wants us to do the investigation for you while you take the credit, and thought a threat would be a way to get me hopping; or three, you want to use me and my department as a stalking horse while you do your own investigation behind the scenes, possibly because there have been other, similar murders somewhere else." 

Wizer took his hand off Emil's mouth. "It seems that I underestimated you, Sheriff." 

"You're not the first. Now, are you going to come clean and tell me which it is?" 

Wizer waggled a forefinger. "That . . . is a secret!" 

To my surprise, Val growled. We all blinked at him, even Emil. 

"Let me rephrase that," I said. "Either you give me a straight answer, or I toss you and your helper there into one of the cells downstairs and tell everyone that the killer's been caught, along with his accomplice." 

"But that's completely unjust!" Emil said. Wizer put his hand over the younger man's mouth again. 

"Haven't you figured it out yet, kid?" I asked, looking at him with contempt. "This isn't about justice—it's about politics, jurisdiction, the law, and who gets to run what. There isn't a hell of a lot of _justice_ in police work. That's what the courts are for." 

Wizer stared at me for several moments, or at least I think he did. With eyelids that heavy, it was hard to tell what he was looking at. "There have been other murders," he admitted at last. "In Dils, Ruvinagald, Zephilia . . . even a few reports from beyond the Desert of Destruction. Scattered over nearly fifty years, or perhaps even longer. Ritualistic murders, involving extensive torture of the victims. A basin, bowl, or pot of blood is a common feature. So is cutting the body apart and . . . arranging it. The victims have nothing in common with one another, and it's been going on rather too long to be the work of a single criminal. We suspect a cult of some sort. I've been hunting them for quite some time." 

I considered him, then shrugged. _Why the hell not?_ "Our current working theory is that Axel was killed by a Mazoku." 

Wizer blinked, then laughed. "I hadn't taken you for a superstitious man." 

"Superstitious, nothing," I said. "I killed a minor Mazoku the day before yesterday, in front of four witnesses, and Val did for two more. Unless you believe five-foot-tall bulletproof purple wolves with six legs and tentacles that bleed black smoke are a _natural_ phenomenon." 

"Mmrgh!" Emil said, still gagged by his superior's hand. Wizer let him go. "That description sounds like one of the lesser servants of the Beastmaster." 

"What makes you say that?" 

"Her natural form is that of a winged wolf—a very big one. So a lot of her servants have similar forms. It's traditional in my family for younger children to be educated as though we were going into the priesthood," Emil added, "although very few of us actually do. So I have a good background in cosmology. I just wish more information had survived the Plague Years." 

I snorted. "So what else can you tell us about Mazoku?" Val would probably be able to give a more detailed and complete answer, but I'd need to bother Sinian again to get it, and he'd probably end up very pissed off if we kept on turning up on his doorstep. I wasn't willing to trust random articles on the Internet for something that had suddenly become this important. 

"They're energy beings that reproduce by binary fission," Emil said. "Or that's what you get once you peel all the religious ornamentation off what's written about them in the _Book of Ceiphied_. Each Mazoku is a fragment of Ruby-Eyed Shabranigdo, Ceiphied's eternal rival. They feed on the negative emotional energy of humans and similar creatures. The dragons have been their enemies ever since the beginning. And they haven't been heard from all that much since the Plague Years." 

"What about this Beastmaster?" 

"Ruby-Eye spun off five other Dark Lords—Mazoku more powerful than the others. Beastmaster was one. The others . . . uh . . . Hellmaster, the Chaos Dragon, Deep-Sea, and the Ice King. It's said that the Chaos Dragon was killed by Hellmaster about three centuries before the Plague, and Hellmaster was offed by a human sorcerer a few months later. Somehow. The others dropped out of history completely around the time the Plague hit." 

Some of that sounded vaguely familiar, so I'd probably read it during my earlier research. "And if we're dealing with this Beastmaster's servants, what does that _mean_ , exactly, in practical terms?" 

Emil's shoulders slumped. "I don't know. Like I said, no one's actually _seen_ one for over four hundred years. Except you, I guess. How did you manage to kill one, anyway? They're supposed to be impervious to physical weapons. There are spells, a few of them, but I've never met anyone who can make any but the weakest ones work." 

I shrugged. "I tore it apart with my bare hands. Turned it into a pile of grey dust, which looked pretty fucking dead to me." 

"But . . . Oh, that's right—Mr. Wizer said you were part dragon. You'd be able to affect the astral with just your body, then." This time, when Wizer tried to clamp a hand over his mouth, Emil was ready for him, and dodged. 

"Been checking up on me, have you? Well, I can't say that I'm surprised." I let that sink in for a moment, then said, "I'd suggest waiting for the forensics report before you start poking around. Although I honestly don't give a shit, because I don't think you're going to find anything you can use. If I start getting complaints that you're harassing people, though, I'll find some way of landing you in a cell, if not a hospital bed. Maybe a hospital bed in a cell." 

"You realize that that could be damaging to your career," Wizer said. 

"Career? What fucking career? Elected position, remember? And I've run unopposed every time except the first. Seems that East Sairaag County trusts me to do my job. Now, go find something to do with yourselves for the next three or four hours." 

Wizer reached into his pocket and pulled out a book. Emil reached into his and pulled out a smartphone. I shrugged and reached for my stack of folders. As power struggles went, this was pretty low-key, but we all knew the rules: I'd lose if I threw them out or took notice of them in any way, they'd lose if they left under their own power before Vrumugun got here with the forensics report. And I don't like losing. 

Val stayed where he was, leaning against the wall. Since he'd growled at Wizer, he'd been doing a pretty good imitation of a statue. Right now his eyes were closed, and I wondered if he knew how to sleep standing up. 

Vrumugun turned up with a folder in his hand three minutes before noon. An unexpectedly thick folder. I flipped through it quickly. There were a lot of photos, some of them black-and-white, some of them not making sense at the first glance. Some seemed to have been blown up from much smaller sizes. And there were pages and pages of text—computer analysis printouts, handwritten notes, even what looked like a paper from some fucking science journal. _Shit, it's going to take a while to get through this._

"Vrumugun, tell Mazenda to go down to that place on the corner of Third and Spruce and pick up their meal for eight. On the office expense account," I added, and began to spread out the first series of photos, the expected colour ones of the crime scene. 

"You're going to have lunch while you look at _that_?" Emil asked, pointing to a picture of the . . . corpses. 

I shrugged. "I saw the real thing yesterday, kid, and had lunch less than an hour later. A few pictures aren't going to bother me." 

"She said it would be about ten minutes," Vrumugun said, returning to the inner office. "I take it you want me here?" 

"Given that you stuffed a lot more than the usual into the file, yeah." 

Vrumugun looked at Wizer and Emil, then at Val, eyebrows raised. I sighed. 

"Wizer Freion and Emil Seyruun, PBI. Kerth Vrumugun, county coroner and crime scene forensics on the rare occasions when we need such a thing. Now, sit the fuck down, all of you." I didn't bother to provide any explanation for Val following me around again. Let Vrumugun think whatever he wanted. 

Everyone sat. Vrumugun reached for the folder, and I handed it to him. 

"I'll begin with the autopsy report," he said. "Based on the condition of the human remains, not only had Mr. Axel not been deceased for twelve hours, he died when I placed the remains in a body bag for removal from the crime scene. That makes as much sense to me as it does to you, so I've sent a portion of the body to one of the city labs for more intensive testing. The dogs, assuming that the behaviour of dog flesh approximates that of human flesh, did die the evening before the bodies were found. All cuts to the bodies had been made with sharp instruments, but the instrument used on the dogs was not the same as that used on Mr. Axel." 

"The blood in the pot?" I asked. 

"Entirely dog blood, as far as I was able to determine." Vrumugun frowned just a hair, and added, "Mr. Axel's body showed some signs of recent dental surgery, unhealed. I contacted his dentist, who informed me that Mr. Axel had not had an appointment in more than three years, at which point he had received the treatment indicated." 

"Fuck," I muttered. "Did you do the test for magic residues?" 

Vrumugun nodded. "Not only the bodies and the pot, but everything on the entire farm, seems to have been exposed to a great deal of magic." 

"And the rest of this?" I asked. 

"Anomalies. Some of them very odd indeed." Vrumugun fell silent again as the door to the outer office opened and shut. Less than a minute later, Mazenda had set down the containers on my desk and was opening them. 

"I'm not even sure what some of this stuff is," Emil said. 

"They've got that cook from the edge of the desert in again," Mazenda said. "So be careful of anything that looks reddish, unless you like spicy." She filled a plate for herself with quick, efficient motions, then took it and a set of plastic utensils with her as she returned to the outer office. 

The rest of us served ourselves—Val, in particular, heaped his plate. I should probably be trying to feed him better, given Doctor Raada's "prescription". I wasn't sure that the sparring this morning could really be considered _light_ activity, either. Maybe I'd order a pizza for the two of us tonight, instead of just making do with instant noodles. 

"Anomalies," I said to Vrumugun, prompting him to take up where he'd left off. 

"Yes. Well." Vrumugun shuffled through the file. "All the food in the kitchen had best-before dates that had long since expired. With the exception of the dog food. No appliances showed recent use. The refrigerator hasn't worked in at least a year. The plumbing belches rust. The parts of the house a visitor wouldn't be expected to see, such as the bedroom, were all extremely dusty." 

"You're saying it looked like someone was trying to disguise the fact it was abandoned." 

"Exactly." 

We all ate in silence for a bit. What Vrumugun _wasn't_ saying was that all the evidence pointed to old man Axel having died three years ago. And yet several people had seen and spoken to him in the past week. Including me. 

So we had an _extremely_ well-preserved dismembered corpse, drained of blood, an impostor, a couple of dead dogs . . . and a Mazoku. Plus an open vault with a dragon trapped inside it, and a pot full of dog blood. _Fuck._ I should have handed this case straight over to Dinan, but Wizer showing up had rattled me more than I wanted to admit. Still, there was something bothering me . . . something . . . 

_The timing,_ I realized. _If there's been a fucking Mazoku up there impersonating Axel for three years, why suddenly reveal that the old buzzard's dead now?_ The only thing that had changed was . . . I glanced at Val, who returned my gaze levelly. But Axel, or the Mazoku impersonating him, had _drawn our attention_ to the fucking hole in the ground. Meaning that he'd wanted us to find Val. Meaning . . . that he'd wanted me to touch that barrier? Val was . . . a trap? No, I still couldn't believe that. Bait? Possible, but if so we were missing a hook and a fish—I wasn't arrogant enough to believe they were after _me_. Or . . . if they couldn't get that barrier down themselves to free him . . . if they needed him for something, and knew that I'd be able to get at him . . . But what use could he possibly be to them? Dragons and Mazoku were enemies. _Damn, Val, I wish I could talk to you._

Also, if that spell Val had mentioned that would allow a weak Mazoku to look plausibly human was cast using human blood, what would happen if it was cast using dog blood? Did we have a plausible-looking Mazoku dog running loose around the area? Was I going to have to use my deputies as dog catchers and sweep the county for strays? 

"And the rest of this?" I reached across the desk to tap the top of the folder with my finger. 

"That was when it got interesting." Although you'd never be able to tell it from Vrumugun's tone of voice. "When I sprayed the living room carpet to check for additional blood, I found this. I have no idea what it's supposed to signify." 

The photo he pulled out of the file was one of the black-and-whites. It showed what might originally have been some kind of circular diagram, light against dark. In the picture, it was a smudgy mess, with pieces of it missing. 

"It looks like a magic circle," Emil said tentatively. "Like you'd use for some kinds of spells—summonings, transmutations, stuff like that. I don't know all that much about them." 

A scarred hand reached past me and picked the picture up. Val examined it closely, frowning, his plate still in his other hand. Then he set the plate down, grabbed a pencil, and began to draw on the back of some random print-out that I'd left lying around, with repeated glances at the photo. 

Circle-within-circle. Off-center box. A squiggle along the top of the box, with a triangle at the end. A scattering of additional little circles here and there. Val completed the drawing with what might have been some kind of lettering around the edge, although it wasn't either modern or pre-Plague script, then set it down beside the photograph. 

"Dynast Grauscherra," he said inscrutably, and picked up his plate again. 

I frowned. The weird diagram _did_ look like it could have been the original of the smudgy circle in Vrumugun's photo, but . . . "That's all we're going to get out of him unless I send up to the university for a translator again. Any ideas?" Actually, the damned thing made me feel like I'd seen it before, but that didn't help me figure out what it _was_. 

"I think . . . that's the Ice King's sigil from the Planes Chart," Emil said. "'Grauscherra' is one of his names—that's what's written here." He traced the writing in the same order Val had set it down, clockwise from the bottom left. "I've never heard 'Dynast' before, but that might be another one of his names—a lot of books on black magic and the Mazoku were burned during the Plague Years, so there's a lot we don't know. The question is, how does _he_ know? You never really introduced him." Emil pointed at Val with his plastic fork. 

"Val is a dragon," I said, picking my truths carefully. "We found him trapped in a spell. He doesn't speak Universal, so if you want to have an actual conversation with him, you'll need a translator for pre-Plague Northern Common. He latched on to me and insists on following me around, for whatever reason. He's also the closest thing we've got to an effective consultant on magic and the Mazoku." 

"Hmm," Wizer said, stroking his chin. "A dragon, you say?" 

I shrugged. "That's what he said he was. A doctor confirmed that he has the right physical features." 

Wizer looked up at Val. "You're certainly an ugly bastard, with that horn and those scars," he said. Val didn't react, but I glared at Wizer in his place. The PBI detective spread his hands in a sort of shrug that might have worked better if he hadn't been holding a plastic fork. "So he really doesn't understand Universal." 

"I didn't ask you to test him," I snapped. 

"And you're very protective of him. That doesn't fit your file at all." Wizer's eyes opened just a bit wider, and I found that being able to see them clearly made me like him even less than I had to start with. They were flat and lightless. Fucking corpse eyes. Anything more different from the hot, glowing gold of Val's gaze, I couldn't imagine. 

" _Fuck_ my file!" I bit back additions like, _Except that from the looks of you, you'd enjoy it!_ and went with, "Can we get on with the fucking forensics report?" 

"I'm not stopping you," Wizer said, his eyes returning to their original, slit, state. 

Most of the rest of what Vrumugun had found was a lot less interesting, although the fact that the hole into the underground chamber had been open for more than a year and probably covered with a tent or tarp was . . . suggestive of the reason for the old man's murder. The real one, three years ago, not the bogus one that had set off our investigation. 

Wizer's gaze kept returning to Val as the dragon refilled his plate and plowed through a second serving, and I don't think he was just noting Val's fondness for the meatballs in red pepper sauce, either. Val, clearly, was about to have his very own PBI file. 

I just hoped the government didn't get too twitchy about him. I'd do anything in my power to keep Val from getting tangled up in that kind of shit, but if things really went haywire it would be hard on Alya . . . 

Fuck, Wizer was right. I really was acting weird about Val. 

_I think I'm just going to have to resign myself to yellow-platypus-hood._

I would have done worse for Val's sake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find Dynast's sigil on the Planes Chart, which shows up occasionally in the anime in the background of the credits or Lina's various explanations about Mazoku. http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/kanzaka/images/f/fd/Planechart.gif is a scan of it from (I think) one of the artbooks.


	7. Emotional Disturbances

"'He could have taken on the form of a dog that way, yes.'" 

I don't think that was what Sinian had expected to be translating over dessert when I'd offered him dinner at a decent restaurant in return for his services. 

"Fuck, and I'd hoped _not_ to have to round up every single dog in the county." I sipped my coffee—I would have preferred another beer, but Val didn't have a driver's license, so it was up to me to get us home. 

Val himself was toying with a glass half-full of peach brandy. Which was odd in a way, since he'd struck me as more of a whisky type. He hadn't ordered dessert, just the drink, and he'd been working his way through it slowly ever since. 

"'If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.'" 

"Not unless you've got a spell that can identify a Mazoku from a hundred feet in the air, possibly with a roof in the way," I said. 

Val shook his head. "'I'd need to know which specific Mazoku we were looking for, and I've never met this one.'" 

I frowned. "The old man was there the day we found you . . . but he went off to muck around in his fields or something before we had you up out of that hole. Shit." 

Val sighed agreement, and took a drink of his brandy. "'Even the really low-level ones usually aren't stupid enough to make that obvious a mistake.'" 

"Do they at least have _some_ kind of weakness?" I grumbled. 

"'Overconfidence, sometimes. And . . . someone . . . told me once that Dynast doesn't like his servants to be too bright. He also doesn't like to risk them.'" 

"Hmm." I didn't know what else to say. Spending the day being hauled all over the place by Wizer while he asked inane questions that I didn't doubt served a purpose beyond the obvious seemed to have scrambled my brains. Overconfidence, stupidity, cowardice . . . how did you even _spot_ those in a random fucking dog? 

"'We could just blow up the entire area, and go on from there,'" Val said with a razor-edged smirk, and I chuckled. 

"We _could_ , I guess, but that feels too much like losing." 

"'And you hate to lose,'" Val said. And while his expression didn't change, I would have sworn his eyes got warmer. 

"How would you know?" 

"'Because I could never have been freed by someone who was weak, by someone inclined to give up . . . by someone not worthy of my trust,'" Val said. "'The spell wouldn't have allowed it.'" 

I was flattered, but . . . it occurred to me to wonder how the fuck he knew what the conditions for releasing the spell he'd been under were. He _could_ just have recognized it, but somehow it sounded more like he'd been the one who'd cast it. 

"How did you end up stuck in that thing, anyway?" I asked. 

Val's smile turned rueful. "'I got careless. Maybe someday I'll be able to bring myself to tell you the details, but not tonight.'" 

"And so you've stayed with me because the spell identified me as trustworthy." 

"'That's one of the reasons.'" More brandy on his part, more coffee on mine. "'Also, you're the one person I've found so far in this sadly changed world who might be able to help me.'" 

That one made me blink. "With the Mazoku?" 

Val nodded. "'You may not be aware of it, but your magical capacity is immense. If you learn to harness it . . . well, it would be less time-consuming than bludgeoning Mazoku to death with your bare hands, anyway.'" 

I snorted, and looked down at those bare hands. I trusted them. They were under my control. I wasn't quite so sure magic would be, even if I wielded it myself . . . but at the same time, it was tempting, in its way. Power. _More_ power. Hating to lose meant that I tended to grasp at whatever shreds of it I could find, and hold onto them like superglue. 

"We'll talk about it later," I said. "When we have some more efficient way of communicating." 

"Thank you, Sheriff," Sinian said, in his own persona. "That was starting to get a bit . . . um." 

"Just don't gossip about it," I warned him. 

"I'll keep the entire conversation as confidential as the intended subject of my next paper," Sinian said, with a weak smile. Which didn't exactly reassure me, but I let it go. 

Val was quiet as we got into my car, and so was I. I concentrated as hard as I could on driving, hoping that something useful would shake loose at the back of my mind while I wasn't paying attention. Sometimes it worked. This time, it didn't. 

I was just pulling into the garage under the house when my cell rang. I'd never bothered to set up individual ringtones or any of that shit, so I had to check it before I could figure out who it was. 

_Alya._

I took the call—there wasn't much else I could do. 

"Hi, Dad . . ." 

"Hey, brat. Listen, I just got back from having dinner out, so give me a minute to get to somewhere I can sit down." I did my damndest to sound normal, but I didn't like the fact she was calling me. Normally she didn't, when she was at her mother's. It tended to piss Eris off. 

"Yeah, that's fine. She's out for an hour or so." 

I took the stairs up from the garage three at a time, leaving Val to follow at his own pace, and nearly brained myself on the doorway at the top of those stairs. I went to the living room and dropped into the nearest chair without taking my coat off. 

"Sorry about that," I told Alya. She was the only person I could remember ever saying those words to. 

"No, it's cool. I just called . . . 'cause I wanted to be sure I wasn't nuts, I guess." A pause. "She's been trying to talk me into staying again." 

I snorted. "Why should this time be any different? Or has it gotten worse?" 

"Lots worse. Her latest guy used to be a Ceiphied's Witness, and I think he's crazy. He ranted for more than an hour after I got here about how you were some kind of devil or something. He tried to take my phone away, but I lied to him and said I had to check in with the lawyer's office while I was here, or they'd send the police after me. And they've got this great big dog, and it hates me. It keeps trying to herd me back into my room." 

"Shit," I muttered, and leaned back in the chair, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Okay. Don't try to fight the dog. Do you need me to have your flight moved up? You know how it's supposed to work, worst-case, and why we chose that room for you." 

"Out the window to the porch roof, down the corner post, call a taxi when I get a couple of blocks away, ticket at the airport counter," she recited, then laughed. "And that sounds kind of crazy too—like some kind of spy movie. Normal dads don't have that practical-paranoid thing going on. I think I'm okay for a couple more days, but if I don't show up at the airport back in Sairaag on time . . ." 

"I'll come and find you," I promised, as I'd done a dozen times before. Val was up from the basement now. He sat down opposite me and began flipping through the old atlas again, glancing up occasionally. "Does whatever fucking idiot she's picked up really think I'm a Mazoku or something?" Given the mess I seemed to be tangled up in, and the Mazoku I'd killed, it was the funniest thing I'd heard in a long time. 

"'Spawn of the Ruby-Eyed, and his name is as chaos itself!'" she said, lowering her voice half an octave. "It should be funny," she added. "You'd be laughing your ass off, if you were here. It _would_ be funny, except that he takes it so seriously. That's what's so scary—not what he says, but the _way_ he says it, and the look in his eyes . . ." 

"I've met a few like that. The trick is to talk to them as little as possible, and get as far away from them as you can, as quickly as you can." What I didn't say was that I was going to push for Eris to lose her unsupervised visit privileges. Most of the judges around here didn't like me much, but there were a couple who owed me favours. And I wasn't going to take chances with Alya's well-being. "When you're away from there, we'll both be able to laugh about it." 

"You think so?" 

"Yeah," I said, "I really do." 

Suddenly, Alya lowered her voice. "Shit, I think I hear their car outside. I'd better go." 

"Right. Stay safe, brat." Such an inadequate thing to say . . . 

"You too, Dad." Barely a whisper, and then all I could hear was empty air. 

I sighed. Stuffed the phone in my pocket. Got up for just long enough to throw my coat at one of the kitchen chairs. Sat back down again with my elbows propped on my knees, staring at nothing. 

"It all makes me feel so fucking _helpless_ ," I said to Val, who had been watching me since the phone call ended. "I can't even _have_ kids—too far from the human norm, all that crap—and yet I got issued this one, and I never feel like I've been looking after her properly. She's brave and she's bright and she could be broken so easily and I don't know if I could get there in time to stop it, or do anything more than pick up the pieces." 

Val got up abruptly and walked around behind me. I felt his hands come to rest on my shoulders . . . and then he was rubbing, squeezing, kneading, working the tension out of me. When I craned around to look at him, he was wearing that sweet, weary smile, and an expression that otherwise spoke of . . . I don't know. Fond exasperation? He also pushed my head back around, gently but firmly, so I didn't get much of a look. I surrendered, closed my eyes, and tried to think of nothing at all as his hands found all the knots in my muscles. 

When he finally stopped, I did feel much better. I opened my eyes in time to see him sit back down in the chair across from me, reach sideways into nothing, and pull out . . . a chessboard. Not a printed cardboard thing like the one I'd used when teaching Alya to play, either—this looked like it was made of ebony inset with marble panels for the white squares. Val laid it between us on the coffee table, then pulled out two drawstring cloth bags and passed one to me. I undid the loose knot holding it shut and pulled out an ebony chess piece. 

I looked at it for a moment, and shrugged—why not, after all? Then I began to lay them out, one by one. Like the board, the pieces were exquisitely worked, and not stylized in the familiar way. The knights were mounted warriors and not horse-heads, the queens had actual feminine curves, and the bishops wore old-fashioned vestments . . . although not those of the Church of Ceiphied. The pawns were foot soldiers, carrying short spears and large, heavy shields. 

They were gorgeous, but well-worn, as though they'd been used for many, many games. Who had Val played with before? Did he miss that person? Who had he left behind in the past when he'd gotten stuck in that spell—friends? A lover? Did he miss them, or had he become so hardened, so used to loss, that he could let them go with nothing more than a regretful sigh? 

A few moves in, I considered the pattern of the pieces and found myself grinning. _King's gambit, hmm?_ I shifted a pawn. _Accepted. Let's see what you do with that._

Val was a decent player, and he sometimes seemed to know what I was going to do before I did, just like he had during our sparring match that morning. The game ended in a stalemate after nearly two hours. 

I leaned back in my seat and stretched, and Val gave me a smirk and began to scoop the white pieces back into their bag. He seemed to feel that battling me to a draw was pretty good. I wouldn't have thought so, but I wasn't him. 

He returned the chessboard and pieces to wherever he'd taken them from—I was pretty sure now that he was just reaching into a storage space and not making things out of nothing—and headed for the stairs. He touched my shoulder, lightly, briefly, on the way past. Part of me wanted to take that as an attempt at flirting, but I couldn't really _justify_ making it into anything more than a comradely touch of reassurance. 

Did Val think I needed companionship? Well, maybe he was right. I couldn't remember the last time I'd spent time with someone else just because I _wanted_ to—other than Alya, of course, but that was different. 

_I don't want him to leave._ Fuck, I could barely even imagine it. He was slotting himself so neatly into my life that it was as though he'd always been destined to be present. Maybe I really would have a chance to . . . _Don't think about it,_ I told myself sternly. _And you, get down,_ I added, glancing irritably at my lap. 

But if I told him it was the price of my protection, of my help . . . he would probably leave right away, I admitted with a sigh. There was a lot I still didn't know about Val, but I couldn't see him as a prostitute—and that was effectively what it would be. Sex for pay. He had far too much pride for that. 

The lump in my lap was _not_ going down. I sighed gustily. I'd have to jerk off if I wanted to get to sleep tonight. Thinking of him. It seemed I was always thinking of him, these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, Val can lie like a rug when he wants to. Longer chapter tomorrow.


	8. Long-Forgotten, Cloistered Sleep

_The darkness twisted in and out and round and round, like the convoluted surface of the human brain. It was . . . oddly familiar. Comfortable. So was the warm, leathery backrest I was leaning against. Leathery . . . or . . . scaly?_

_I turned, and saw a wall of red scales. I'd been leaning against a large, blood-red, vaguely reptilian creature. It seemed to be asleep, or at least my ex-backrest was moving in and out in a slow, even rhythm, and I could hear the sound of something large breathing not very far away._ Fuck, it must be the size of an apartment building.

_There was a sort of red glow around it. Around me too, I realized. The exact same glow, because when I moved my arm away from the . . . creature, the glow visibly stretched instead of separating. The light dyed the sleeve of my coat a vibrant yellow-orange . . . or maybe it really was that colour. Some people might have said it was garish and tasteless, but I kind of liked it._

_A tail lazily snuck into, then back out of, the corner of my vision. If the back end of the creature was that way, then the front end had to be in the other direction, and I had a feeling that the head would be more useful to me in trying to find out what it was._

_I had to skirt an outflung, taloned limb, twitching with dream-impulses, to avoid getting myself skewered. Its smallest claw was longer than my fucking hand. But it never crossed my mind to be afraid. Of course, it usually doesn't._

_And then I found the heads. Three of them, piled in a lopsided pyramid. All of them streamlined and lizard-y with horns and fangs sticking out._

_"A fucking dragon," I said. "It figures." I'd been thinking about dragons a lot lately. Because of Val._

_**Only because of him?** The head at the top of the pyramid opened a single ocean-blue eye and gave me a lazy once-over. Its mouth hadn't moved, but I heard it all the same, a deep booming voice like an articulate explosion. _

_"What other reason could there be?" I asked it—asked him. I was somehow sure that this dragon was a him._

_**We're bored with sleeping, but waking up . . . it's a difficult proposition, isn't it? Bad enough that we have to live in a world designed by assholes, but to be aware of it while we're doing it? There's no room out there for the truth of us anymore.** _

The "truth of us"? _I wondered. It didn't help that I had a feeling "us" had included me. Which made no sense at all. What did I have in common with a three-headed dragon?_

_**Still, he's reason enough, isn't he? Our mate, who was too fucking stubborn to give in when the world decided it wanted to break him. We saved his life, but he was the one who fitted his soul back together, piece by splintered, shattered piece. Crazy dragon. He built himself with bleeding talons into what he thought we needed, then offered himself to us as a gift—not just his obedience, not just his worship, but his love, his companionship, his everything, in one amazing, contradictory package—and made himself ours forever. He was the only one to mourn us when he thought we were gone. Offered a chance at a different life outside our shadow, he almost tore himself apart in his hurry to come back to us. And we can't remember anymore what it's like for him not to be there. Not that we fucking well want to.** _

_Val? Was this three-headed monster talking about Val?_

_**Ours,** the dragon murmured. **Losing him is out of the question . . . but he'd never leave us of his own will, unless he thought it was to protect us.** _

_The streamlined red head jerked to its left, and without thinking, I traced the line of the motion out into the dark. There was another creature there, a large, dark one, glowing with a swirling mixture of red and white. Not that the colours mixed peacefully. Instead, they seemed to push against each other, with fountains of angry gold sparks rising from their points of contact. The aura gave enough light that I could tell I was looking at another dragon, with only one head, and feathery black wings. A horn jutted from his forehead, large and awkward and clearly no part of the original design of his body, and he looked back at us with eyes of clear molten gold._

_"Val?" I whispered. Unthinking, I took a step toward him, hand reaching out—_

—and the dream shattered, leaving me alone in my bed. 

"Fuck," I muttered, sitting up. "What was _that_ all about?" Like most dreams, it had seemed internally consistent at the time . . . Hell, it still did. _Internally._ My lack of fear was the part that didn't make sense. Normal people get at least a little bit nervous when confronted with a giant red three-headed dragon, even ones that're normally pretty brave. 

And . . . had that really been Val? What part of my mind insisted on giving him wings with feathers, even though I knew dragons weren't supposed to look like that? 

I'd known him for four days now. Four days that he'd spent living practically in my pocket—he'd even stayed at the office with me yesterday while I caught up on my paperwork. And I hadn't _minded_ having him so close for so long, that was the incredible part. Even Alya would have started to grate on me after that much forced closeness, but Val's presence was oddly soothing. 

_Mine._ A word that resounded somewhere in the depths of my soul with every beat of my heart whenever the thought of him intruded on my mind. _Mine._

And yet he wasn't. I was going to have to . . . to _court_ him, since I wasn't about to just let him go. And I'd never fucking done anything of the kind before. The few women I'd had relationships with over the years had come to me, never the other way around. Besides, why would what worked with a human woman necessarily work with a male dragon? 

How do you court someone you don't even share a language with? Traditional dating was right out—it was hard to make dinner seem special when you shared every meal, I doubted he'd be entertained by a movie if he didn't understand the language, and . . . hell, what else _did_ people do on dates? _Fuck._ I was going to have to ask someone. Kanzel, maybe. Or Mazenda. And hope they didn't suggest something stupid just to wind me up. Plus, what was Alya going to think of her dad falling for a total stranger? 

I stretched and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Yesterday, Val had met me on my way downstairs in the early morning, and we'd shared another sparring match on the back porch. There hadn't been a definite winner, but we'd both had fun, and I hoped he was awake, because I wanted—maybe even needed—the distraction more than ever today. 

Alya would be coming home tomorrow. And then . . . well, I really wasn't sure what would happen then, but I was pretty sure something would change. I wasn't looking forward to it, even though I wanted my brat of a daughter safe at home, where I could protect her. I'd been enjoying my time alone with Val. 

Val must have sensed my mood, because his expression was solemn when he followed me out onto the porch. It was a little warmer this morning, and he hadn't bothered with a shirt, as though he wanted to show his scarred torso off to full advantage. I liked the scars, though. They marked him as a survivor. And they added to the edginess of his appearance. Without them, he wouldn't have been so very . . . Val. 

I was having an easier time keeping up with him now than I had on that first morning. The more we fought, the more instincts I'd never known I had seemed to be coming to the fore. When Val rose off the ground completely in a leaping kick, my forearm was there to block his feet, instead of letting them strike my chest as he'd clearly intended. He bounced off, and then there was an odd, faint tearing sound, and something black briefly blotted out the rising sun as he dropped gracefully to the ground. 

He had a pair of wings half-spread behind him. Dark, feathered wings. I didn't have time to stare for more than a couple of seconds before he shot forward again. _Concentrate,_ I told myself, and blocked his kicks and rapid punches. Those wings got in on the act too, obscuring my vision and battering at my head until I kicked him hard and forced him to back off again. 

_You_ would _find a way to up the ante on me,_ I thought, exchanging grins with him. With the emergence of his wings, his tactics had shifted, making use of 3D space and of gravity. Wingless, I couldn't match him—I could jump, but not alter my trajectory in midair. 

Or could I? 

It had to be timed just right. The next time he jumped, I did too, with all my force. Then I kicked for the outer edge of his hip. Normally something like that would have been a feint, and he took the blow, backwinging to avoid spinning through more than ninety degrees, aiming a kick back at me, tense and waiting for the blow the feint was supposed to cover for. 

He wasn't expecting me to grab his wrist at just the moment I reached the top of my trajectory and started down again, yanking him with me. Those pretty wings of his weren't equal to keeping us _both_ in the air—if we'd been gliding down from a height, maybe, but not like this—so down we went, thumping hard into the grass of the minuscule lawn. Somehow, we both landed on our feet . . . but Val immediately went to his knees with his arm still in my grip, bowed his head, and said . . . something, forcing all the muscles in his body to relax. 

I sighed. "You're right, that's probably enough for today," I said, and he looked up and grinned at me. I let go of his arm, and he instantly grasped my hand instead, using it to pull himself to his feet. He fluffed his wings, either checking for damage or just trying to settle them comfortably, I wasn't quite sure which. Curious, I reached out toward them . . . then caught myself. Sparring was one thing, but touching him like that would have been different. More personal, I guess. 

Val chuckled and turned around, presenting his back to me. I took it as an invitation and reached out again, this time allowing myself to touch his wings. I could feel the hard bone underneath the feathers as I stroked them cautiously at a point near his shoulder, feeling them shiver just a little. There was a patch of scales between them, along his spine, running from the base of his neck to somewhere down near the lower edge of his ribcage, and I gave into the impulse to explore that too. I'd expected the scales to be slippery, but they felt more like textured leather, warm and alive. I stroked the length of his back, and Val arched into my touch like a cat. Gorgeous and responsive and I was getting way too turned on to be safe, so I backed away and concentrated on getting my hard-on to subside, not that I'd been having much luck with that kind of thing lately. 

_How did I know?_ That was the question foremost in my mind. How could I have dreamed—twice—of Val with these same feathery, un-dragon-like wings, before I'd actually seen them? Had the dragon part of me recognized what species he was somehow? Or . . . what? 

Val flexed his wings one last time before pulling them back in, giving me an excellent view of how feathers and scales receded as everything sank down into his back. In the end, all that was left was a subtle doubling of the lower edges of his shoulderblades, where the major bones rested. He turned to go inside, smirking at me and patting me on the shoulder on the way past. 

Had he actually been _flirting_ with me there? I told myself it was wishful thinking, and yet . . . 

Jerking off in the shower every morning was becoming a routine as well, I thought ruefully. Well, you do what you have to do. I could get used to that if I had to, just as I was starting to look forward to Val handing me a mug of black tea, down in the kitchen. We were going to have to stop off for groceries on the way home tonight, because I was pretty sure all that was left in the house was a can of tomato soup, some instant mac and cheese, and a box of saltines. That was no way to feed a growing human kid—I might be a terrible cook, but I could manage some simple stuff. 

I wondered if Val knew how to cook. I'd have to introduce him to the stove first, probably. Hell, I wasn't even sure how he was making the tea—the electric kettle was stone cold when I touched it. I knew he understood the plumbing because I'd heard him running the water, but electricity seemed to surprise him from time to time. I'd caught him examining my phone yesterday, turning it over in his hands but keeping well away from the touch screen. What would he make of Alya's tablet? As far as I could tell, he was a smart guy, but the handicap of not being able to read Universal would tend to drag him down when it came to that kind of equipment. 

We were about two blocks from the Sheriff's Department offices that morning when the ground vibrated and the surprise nearly made me swerve the car into a lamp post. _What the fuck . . . ?_ The area around Sairaag had never been prone to earthquakes. 

Then we rounded the last corner on our route, and I started to swear. I was still swearing as I pulled up to the curb and vaulted the convertible's door. Val mirrored me on the far side of the vehicle, adding what I suspected were a few choice words of his own. 

The building hadn't collapsed into rubble. Not quite. A good-sized chunk of the front had been sprayed all over the street, though. You could see the inside of my office, and Mazenda's desk had been blown about twenty feet and was now pressed up against the side of a parked car. Windows up and down the block had been shattered. 

Wizer Freion was sitting on the curb with a bleeding cut on his forehead and Emil leaning over him with a ball of flickering light in his hand. Seigram, who was in charge of the graveyard shift, was picking himself up out of the rubble and shaking his head. The mask he wore to conceal the scars he'd taken when a high-speed chase he'd been in as a rookie cop had ended in a high-speed crash was knocked askew, which was probably making it difficult for him to see out of one eye. 

I went over to him and straighten the fucking thing, because it was bothering me. Then I said, "Was anyone else inside?" Knowing that we could worry about what the fuck had happened later. 

"Kanzel and Mazenda had just shown up for their shift," Seigram said. 

"Shit. Go call the fucking ambulance, if no one else has already. I'm going to go find them." To my eye, the roof still looked like it was mostly in one piece and decently supported, so it should be safe enough provided the floor didn't give way and dump me into the cell block. "Kanzel!" I shouted. "Mazenda!" 

"Boss!" _Mazenda._ I almost breathed a sigh of relief, but before I could, she continued, "Kanzel's pinned under a beam, and I . . . I think there's another bomb!" 

_What?_ "Shit! Where?" 

Mazenda pointed at a spot where a slab of wall had fallen to rest against a filing cabinet, leaving a triangular chunk of flooring mostly bare of debris. There was a glowing circle inscribed on the remains of the carpet there, something that looked like a clock with a single, slowly advancing hand sweeping along the edge of a circle. Sections of the edge winked out as the clock-hand passed them. At its current rate, I thought we might have a couple of minutes. 

"The other one was on the ceiling," Mazenda said tiredly. "We spotted it a few seconds before it went off. We were trying to figure out what it was," she added in a disgusted tone. "Kanzel shoved me out of the way when the ceiling started coming down, into the doorway between the two offices, but he couldn't—" She wiped her hand across her face. You wouldn't have been able to tell from the way she was talking that she'd been crying all along, turning her makeup into a smeared mess. I could see her better now, and Kanzel, or at least as much of him as was poking out from under the pile of debris in front of her. He had a big lump on his forehead, and looked like he was out cold. 

Two minutes . . . I could see the end of the problem beam sticking out of the rubble, and grabbed it, trying to lift—fuck, it couldn't weight more than a car, right? Except that it seemed like it did. Then Val was beside me, straining upwards as well, and I heard metal scream as something bent and the beam shot abruptly up to shoulder height. Thankfully Mazenda had her wits about her, and she grabbed Kanzel under the armpits and dragged him clear. 

The hand on the magic time-bomb swept forward as we put the beam carefully down, wasting precious seconds because if we let it bounce, it might end up pinning Kanzel again. I was cursing almost continuously as I swung the unconscious deputy up into my arms. He might have broken his back, but there was no time to check with that clock-hand counting down. We had seconds to get out, scrambling wildly over the rubble. 

And then Mazenda caught one of her fucking heels in some little gap and fell over, and Val grabbed her arm and began to drag, but there was no way he could have been quick enough, and there was a flare of light and I just had time to think _Oh, shit!_ before the explosion slammed into us. 

We flew out into the street, and . . . rolled. _What the fuck?_ We were, I realized as sense slowly returned, encased in some kind of clear bubble, which was protecting the four of us as we bounced. Like being inside of the world's biggest fucking washing machine, but at least we weren't being skewered by flying lengths of rebar. 

We finished up on the other side of the street, against a car that now had a nicely dented door in addition to smashed windows, in a pile inside the bubble. With me at the bottom and the other three, variously overlapped, on top of me. I was sure now that Val was heavier than a human would have been, since I had Kanzel, who was of similar size and build, to compare him to. 

After a moment, the bubble popped, and Val rolled off of me and offered Mazenda a hand to help her up. She staggered awkwardly to her feet—one of her stupid fucking shoes had lost its heel. 

"I knew I should have worn flats," she muttered. Then, "Kanzel? Is he . . . ?" 

I checked for a pulse, relaxed slightly when I found one. "Alive. Still out cold, though, and . . . shit, he'd bleeding all over me." It looked like a nasty compound fracture of his leg, on top of the lump on his head and any internal organs the debris might have squished. 

Val knelt down beside us and glanced at me. I had no idea what he wanted, but offered him a shrug and a nod anyway. 

The dragon-mage took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to speak in slow, measured tones with his hands cupped palm-downward over Kanzel's chest. " _Seinaru iyashi no mite yo—_ " Wind began to swirl around him, even though the air had been still a moment ago. "— _hahanaru daichi no ibuki yo, negawakuba_ —" A ball of light had formed beneath his cupped hands and was spreading outward to envelop Kanzel's body. "— _waga mae ni yokotawarishi kono mono wo, sono ooinaru jihi ni te sukui tamae! Rizarekushon!_ " 

There was a bright flash, and the air tingled unpleasantly, or at least that's the best I can do in terms of describing how it felt to me. When I got done with swearing and blinking away the afterimages, the light and the wind were gone, Val was kneeling with his head tilted back and the bridge of his nose pinched between his thumb and forefinger like he was trying to stop a nosebleed, and Kanzel was . . . whole. No compound fracture, no lump on his head. I would have bet that even his bruises were gone. Unlike mine. 

An ambulance skidded to a stop at the end of the block, the driver clearly not willing to enter the mess of debris clogging the street, and a couple of paramedics piled out and came running toward us. Shit, how was I even going to start to explain . . . 

"Ugh," Kanzel said, suddenly sitting up. "Shit. Did anyone get the number of the freight train that hit me?" He was fingering his forehead in the area where the lump had been, seemingly not quite believing it wasn't there anymore, although how he even knew it had existed when he'd been out cold since he'd gotten it— 

"That really _was_ a real Resurrection spell! I've never met anyone who could cast it before." And when the fuck had Emil Seyruun gotten here? Wizer, too. And I was still sitting on the ground, although at least I wasn't half-pinned under Kanzel anymore. _Fuck._

I got to my feet and dusted off my coat, but it was going to take more than that to get the poor thing clean this time. Blood and char marks and . . . hell, it looked like it had a couple of holes burned through it. I might have to get another one, and I knew from experience that custom-tailored clothing was not cheap. Unfortunately, there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do about it, either. In the meanwhile, though, I needed to get everyone sorted out and moving in some useful direction. 

"Kanzel, you got hit in the head when the building blew. Go to the ambulance and have someone check you for concussion—even if you feel okay, I don't know how well magical healing does at fixing brains. Mazenda, go with him if you like. One of you phone me when you know where you're going to be spending the rest of the day, because I still need to debrief you properly. Val . . ." 

The dragon was still kneeling with his head tilted back and his fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose, but one molten gold eye opened and swiveled in my direction as I spoke his name. I offered him my hand, and with a sharp grin, he let go of his nose and let me help him to his feet. A single drop of blood trickled from one nostril, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He didn't look damaged, otherwise. 

"Well, you sure saved Kanzel's ass this time," I told him. "I'll try to make sure he's appropriately grateful." 

"Seeing him in action makes me wonder what else magic like that could fix." Seigram had picked his way to us across the street, and now stood leaning against a delivery van with shattered windows and two flat tires. His hand rose absently to touch his mask. 

"If that really was a Resurrection spell, then it could fix almost anything," Emil said. "The temple lore says that in the hands of someone who knows what he'd doing, it can regrow missing limbs. Among other things. That's just what the books say, though. What we just saw was probably the first time it's been cast in centuries." 

"How the fuck did we manage to lose something like that?" I muttered. It was a rhetorical question, really, but Emil took it seriously. 

"You need at least three things to cast a spell: a high enough innate magical capacity, the Chaos and Power Words—that is, the part you'd usually think of as the spell itself—and an understanding of the being you're calling on. Only one human in fifty has the capacity to cast Resurrection at all, and because it was white magic it was passed around mostly by priests and shrine-keepers. The spell was lost when the last known caster died in the Burning of Seyruun; by then, the Mazoku had already destroyed all accurate written copies. Or so they say," Emil finished with a shrug. "I know people who would pay a thousand goldmarks just for the Chaos Words. For someone who can actually _work_ the spell . . ." He shrugged. 

And what, I wondered, would Val say to that? Nothing polite, I'd guess. He'd be just as unhappy as some big shot's captive mage as he would have been as Sairaag U's encyclopedia of the pre-Plague years. Val was like me: a fighter. 

But for now, I had other things on my mind. Like the fact that some asshole had just blown up my fucking office using magical land mines, and I had no idea who'd been responsible. Hell, I didn't even know whether or not there had been anyone in the basement cells. If there had been, we'd have had to wash them out with a fucking hose, so I was more than a little relieved when Seigram reported they had been empty. 

The day went by in a crazy tumble that made me feel like I was bouncing around inside Val's shield-sphere again. We had a bunch of county workers trying to clean up the street, temporary headquarters to set up, and gear to recover from the ruins. My car had survived the second explosion in one piece, due to being parked a couple of doors down and on the same side of the street, outside the main path of the blast, and we'd recovered the department motorcycle from under a tilted slab of masonry, but Cruiser Two was a pancake and the van was a total loss. We'd have no lock-up of our own for the foreseeable future, and any prisoners we had would have to be transported to the city jail in the back of Cruiser One, which had been on its way back from patrol with the other night-shift man. 

Mazenda's radio was found sitting on a roof beam, astoundingly still functional inside its dented casing. My desk was kindling, my chair needed new upholstery, all the paper files we'd kept were shreds and carbon, and we'd have to recover the computer files from the weekly backups in the safety deposit box at the bank down the street . . . but like the radio, the fucking coffee maker had survived, although it needed a new carafe. So we were doomed to another decade of shitty coffee on top of everything else. 

Since half the neighbourhood had come out to rubberneck, it didn't take me long to find somewhere to move us to. There had been a uniform-drycleaning place around the corner that had gone belly-up a few years ago, and the building was still empty because the ground floor was a torn-up mess, but there was office space upstairs and the part of the ground floor that wasn't torn up had been used as garage space for delivery vans. It would do for now. The actual owners of the building were some company based in Elmekia, but their local agent was in the rubbernecking crowd and he was glad to bend the rules a bit and set up a short-term lease. I had to sign the fucking thing personally, which meant that if I couldn't squeeze the money out of county funds later, I'd be on the hook for it myself—which didn't thrill me, but I was in a fucking hurry. At least they'd never turned the electricity off, although we'd have to wait until tomorrow for working plumbing. 

A dozen cheap office chairs and some ready-to-assemble desks put together by Kanzel (who'd been medically advised not to drive today, just in case) and Mazenda (in sensible flat shoes for once), plus a rusty filing cabinet retrieved from the back of someone's office at the county courthouse and a new computer, and we were back in business, more or less. We'd eased my chair up out of the basement of the old building and thrown a blanket over it to keep it from leaking any more foam, and Mazenda had found me some monstrosity of an adjustable desk that could be set to something like the right height. During all this, Val had been prowling through the new building drawing shit on the walls with a broken pencil. Since red fire briefly outlined every diagram he completed, I figured it was magic and best left well enough alone. Maybe he was trying to keep everything from blowing up again. I hoped so, anyway. 

By eight o'clock that night, everything was as close to sorted out as it would be for a while, and it was long past time for me to take a break. Right now I envied that bastard Wizer—he'd disappeared as soon as he'd found out where we were setting up. He and Emil were probably settled in a nice comfortable hotel room by now, after a supper that had to have consisted of more than a couple of slices of pizza and a fucking fake beer. And I hadn't gotten the fucking grocery shopping done and Alya was coming home tomorrow and . . . _Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye, just fuck it all!_

I pulled into the garage at home with a screech of tires that echoed up and down the street. It took intense, teeth-gritting control to turn the key to the "off" position without twisting the metal and breaking it off inside the ignition. 

Beside me, Val watched. Not calmly, though. I could see the tension in him, the poised readiness. He was coiled for action, but just like me, he had nothing to act on. 

I forced myself to perform my end-of-day routine meticulously. Hang up my battered coat. Strip off my shoulder holster, take the clip out of my .44, and put gun and bullets away in the gun-safe. I had a clear view through the doorway into the kitchen while I was doing it, and watched Val making tea by filling the teapot, then cupping his hands around it and muttering a spell. He poured off a single mug and doped it with something from a square dark glass bottle that he pulled out of nowhere. Then he came into the living room where I had just flopped down into my favourite chair. He sat down opposite me, in what I was starting to think of as _his_ chair, and pulled another bottle out of nothingness. This one was small and round and brown—a beer bottle, although I didn't recognize the brand. 

Val popped the old-style metal cap off with a thumbnail that momentarily looked longer and darker than it should have, and offered the bottle to me. I shrugged and took it. 

The first pull was enough to make me glad that I had, because it was the best fucking beer I'd ever tasted—dark, with a nutty, almost burnt flavour, none of that "pale ale" crap. The label was in old-style script, but I made a mental note to have it translated and find out if the brewery still existed. I didn't care if I had to have the stuff shipped from the other side of the world. It would be worth it. 

I finished it faster than I probably should have and waved a hand in Val's direction. He put another bottle in it. Convenient dragon. What the fuck had I done without him? 

He took one last long pull at his mug and set it aside, and I wondered idly what he had spiked it with. I could faintly smell licorice, but that didn't help much. He seemed more relaxed now, but still alert, watching me with that intent golden gaze. 

When he handed me the third beer, his fingers brushed my wrist. I couldn't tell whether it was on purpose or not, but it sent a surge of warmth up my arm. I found myself watching him closely through half-lidded eyes. The rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. The way a lock of that messy aqua hair shadowed his face. The movement of muscles under his too-tight T-shirt as he shifted position. And that expressive mouth, curled into a familiar smirk. Right now, it would taste of tea and . . . what? 

It wouldn't take much to find out. Lunge across the coffee table, pin him to the chair, seal my lips over his. If he was flirting with me, he'd probably welcome it. If he was . . . 

Val rose to his feet and began to make his way back to the kitchen. For more tea, maybe. It didn't matter. What did matter was that his path took him past me, and his hand brushed me again—just gently against my arm, but it made something inside me snap. 

I grabbed him and yanked him down across my lap. The tea mug in his hand bounced away across the carpet as he stared up at me for a single frozen instant, gold eyes burning, lips parted. Then I used that horn of his to pull him up to meet me. 

I'd been right about him tasting of tea—tea and licorice and . . . Val. He made a soft throaty sound as my tongue entered his mouth, and then he had one arm around my neck and was kissing me back, hungrily. His canine teeth were more like fangs, inhumanly long and thick. 

_Mine,_ that deep part of my mind repeated over and over again. _Mine, mine, mine!_ My hand slid under the lower hem of his shirt, and I ran it over his stomach, feeling skin and scars and shivering muscles, while my other arm supported his shoulders. He had his fingers tangled in the back of my shirt collar, helping to hold himself in place as we spoke to each other without words. 

"Fuck," I whispered against his lips as he drew back. "Val . . ." He captured my mouth again for a moment, nipping my lower lip, then pushed up and off my lap. He grabbed my hands as he stood straddling my knees and pulled me out of the chair . . . and then suddenly we were in the upstairs hallway just outside my open bedroom door, staggering awkwardly and both trying to catch our balance. Magic? I didn't care, I just backed him up against the wall and grabbed the collar of his shirt, tearing it open all the way to the waist. He didn't seem to mind—in fact, he groaned something and put his arms around me, pushing my shirt up at the back so that he could flatten his hands against bare skin while I decorated his neck with little nipping kisses and he tried his best to do the same to me. 

The torn shirt slid down off his shoulders as we sidled over toward my room together, almost pinning his arms. And leaving his shoulders bare. My mouth went suddenly dry as I remembered those soft, shadow-dark wings of his. I touched his shoulders, traced their contours, and felt skin and muscle bunch and stretch and erupt into two additional powerful limbs. _Fuck_ , he was gorgeous, horn and all. Every inch of him, the sound of his voice, the distinct and subtle flavour of his scarred skin, the enticing, musky scent of him . . . all absolutely perfect. It felt like I'd been waiting for this all my life. Like Eris had been wrong because she hadn't been him. 

I'd never believed in the crap some people spouted about soul-mates, but right now I was starting to wonder if there wasn't something to it after all. 

_Mine!_

I turned him to face away from me and began to trace the length of his spine with my tongue. Scales tasted even better than skin, and the scent of him became muskier and less human as I buried my face for a moment between his wings. Better than perfect and oh Ceiphied, I was right on the edge of busting open my fly. I ended up on my knees with my face pressed to the small of Val's back, his wings shivering against my sides every time my breath tickled his skin, trying to unfasten the front of his trousers by feel. 

A soft, wordless growl worked my way up my throat when I felt his hands get in the way of mine, but he undid the fastenings quickly, pushed the rest of his clothes down, then took my hand in his and put it directly on his bare cock. 

An odd shudder ran through me as I curled my fingers around it and Val let loose a belling cry that made the entire floor vibrate. It felt exactly, unexpectedly right in my hand, just as I'd imagined it . . . even though I'd been trying _not_ to imagine it. 

I tried to keep my touch gentle as I explored the velvet hardness of it, the slick, leaking tip, the veiny underside, the way it twitched as I rubbed circles into it just below the head. I moved further back for a moment, cupped his balls, playing with them and feeling his wings jerk. 

" _G-Gaav-sama . . . o-negai . . ._ " 

I might not have understood the words, but the tone came through loud and clear and pleading. I pressed my forehead against those scales as I began to stroke him rhythmically, as I might have done for myself, listening to the flutter of wings to either side of me and the disjointed syllables being spoken by that husky, desperate voice. Right now, I controlled Val's world, and that, too, was exactly as it should have been. 

"Val." It came out as a deep, throaty growl. " _My_ Val." 

" _Gaa-aaaa-AAAAAAAAH!_ " He screamed as his cock pulsed, splattering thick, sticky fluid against my hand. Red lightning jumped from his palms and crackled over both our bodies, leaving a pleasant tingle and a hot-cold flutter somewhere deep inside my brain. It also turned my clothes to thin grey ash, but I didn't fucking care. Then it was over, and Val sagged, panting. 

I let go of his softening cock and rose to a standing position behind him, wrapping the arm that wasn't coated in dragon jizz around his body. He sighed and leaned back against me. When he twisted his head around and tilted his face up to steal a kiss, he was smiling. It was the most contented expression I had ever seen on him. 

"Val," I said again, and he arched, rubbing our bodies together. Rubbing his back against my cock. The sensation was almost unbearable, and I growled and bit his ear. He chuckled and took a shuffling half-step over toward the bed. I lifted him off his feet, scooping him up with one arm, and took three steps more, pushing him down onto the mattress. Eyes full of fire, he wrapped both of his legs around my body and pulled me down with him. I ended up on top of him, supporting myself with knees and my non-sticky hand. 

I leaned down, and gave the side of his neck a warning bite, reminding him who was in charge here. He gave me a sharp-edged grin and subsided, for the moment. 

My hand moved without thought, coating my erection with sticky-slick fluid. Part of me knew exactly what I wanted to do to him now, with his body sprawled underneath mine, his cock starting to harden again. The other part of me was gibbering quietly—I was going to do _that_? But it would feel _so_ fucking good . . . impossibly, although I'd never done it before, I knew _exactly_ how it would feel, just like I'd known what Val's wings would look like. 

I sat back on my heels. Put my hands under Val's ass and lifted him into a better position. He used his legs and back and wings to keep himself there as I spread him and adjusted locations and angles (where had I learned how to do this? _When?_ ) and began to push forward. 

I didn't expect him to be able to take my whole cock. Even the women I'd been with sometimes had problems fitting something a foot long and as thick as my wrist inside their bodies, and Val didn't have the right specialized opening. So I was pretty fucking surprised to feel myself bottom out completely encased in hot-slick- _tight_ , with Val breathing hard and his cock, erect again, poking against my stomach. 

I pulled halfway out and slammed back in, and Val keened, back arching. A wing struck the side of my head, a hard buffet, and I gave him another warning bite, this time on the shoulder, tasting metal and salt. He gasped and said something that might have been an apology, or a request to continue, or a centuries-old grocery list. All I knew—all I cared about—was that he wasn't pulling back or trying to get me to stop. 

His arms locked around my body as I began to fuck him hard and fast, and then he raised his wings as well, folding them over my back, covering the surface of my skin with soft feathery scales. From the outside, it must have looked like we were a single being, four legs and two heads and a single torso. 

_He offered himself to us as a gift, and made himself ours forever._

_Mine!_

Val's eyes locked with mine. I didn't understand the word he spoke then, but those eyes told me what it meant, as red lightning began to crackle over us again and his body convulsed around mine: 

_Yours._

Orgasm crashed over me, wringing a bass roar from my throat. It was a sound I would have sworn that a human body couldn't produce, and it made the building tremble. And something cracked inside my head. 

— _inadequate human body, soul that isn't mine stuck to me like a fucking lead weight, but I'm not just going to run away! If she's going to curse me, she can fucking well suffer for it! I grab one of the tendrils sprouting from the bitch's head and use my other hand, my inadequate human hand, to drive my sword straight into her eye. It's long enough to stab into the brain, and I don't give a flying fuck that I'm going to be crushed under her when she falls_ — 

My mind flinched away, and I was crouched on all fours over Val as he unwrapped his wings from around the two of us, my softening cock still inside his body. Feeling immensely tired all of a sudden, I sat back on my heels, pulling out of him. Val curled up into a sitting position for a moment, pulling his wings back into his body. He planted a quick kiss on my mouth, then flopped back onto the bed again, eyes sliding shut. Which seemed like exactly the right thing to do. 

I lay down on my side, curling my body around his, and drew a blanket over us, not caring that I was sticky or that the room smelled of sex. We could clean up in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't bother trying to put the Japanese for the Resurrection spell through an ignorant-monolingual-transcriptionist filter this time because I figured it was more trouble than it was worth.
> 
> And no, I don't have any idea why I've always thought of Gaav as a beer snob with a preference for stouts. He just strikes me as the type, I guess.


	9. Family Matters

_Someone turn off that fucking sun,_ was my first thought when I woke up. Then, _Why do I keep dreaming this shit?_ And why was my arm numb? And the room smelled of sex and dragon and . . . _not a dream,_ I realized. 

My arm was numb because Val was using it as a pillow. Hell, he'd drooled on me, the crazy bastard. The corners of his mouth were turned up, and he looked very satisfied. He also looked like he'd been dragged ten miles behind somebody's car, bruised and battered and . . . oh, fuck, I hadn't thought I'd bitten him _that_ hard, but there was a scabbed-over crescent of toothmarks clearly visible on his shoulder, and now that I thought about it, I remembered the taste of his blood on my tongue. I'd been crazy last night. Completely without restraint. I could have hurt him badly. 

"Fuck," I whispered out loud, and golden eyes blinked open. "Fuck, Val, I'm sorry." 

"For what?" 

I jerked, eyes widening. 

"I knew exactly what I was asking for last night," Val added. "And if you regret giving it to me . . . I'm going to be more than a little pissed off." And he gave me that razor-edged grin of his, golden eyes utterly fearless. 

"So you've been faking the language thing all along," I grumbled, because it was the first thing that popped into my head. 

He shook his head. "You were fully yourself last night—only for a few seconds, but it was enough for the bond between us to reconnect. Unfortunately, that means that you and that idiot professor are still the only people around here who can understand me, and I can only understand other people when you're within earshot. Still, it's better than nothing." 

My eyes narrowed. _Bond between us? Reconnect?_ And his wings, and the familiarity that had existed between us from the first moment, and . . . "You're saying that I knew you . . . before, but I'm pretty damned sure I'd remember a scarred-up crazy dragon with a horn on his head." 

"That's because you don't remember anything about that part of your life right now. But you've already broken through once. It should all come back eventually." 

"You don't look very happy about that." And he didn't, not with that scowl on his face. 

"I don't think this era is good for you—for me either, for that matter. Since you broke me out of the time-freeze, you've seemed a lot more subdued than usual. And determined to fit in, which isn't like you at all. What the fuck are you doing _keeping the peace_ , of all things, in some human town? You should be at the head of an army! Instead, you're acting like you've given up. Like you've resigned yourself to letting others be in charge." 

_At the head of an army . . ._ That did resonate somewhere inside me. Leading troops into battle, sword in hand . . . 

_No one uses swords anymore._

"It isn't something I'm doing for my own sake," I told Val, but if anything, that just made his frown deeper. 

"For who, then?" 

"Alya. My daughter. She deserves to grow up in a peaceful world." 

"The human girl in the photos downstairs? Surely you know she isn't really yours." 

"And just why couldn't she be?" 

"Because Mazoku hybrids can't reproduce—not sexually, at any rate, and if that girl is a Mazoku, I'll eat my headband." 

He was still wearing it, too—the only item of clothing either of us had on us just now. I found myself staring at it, unable to frame any kind of useful reply to what he'd said. 

"You didn't have any idea, did you? None at all." Val seemed just as surprised as I was, if not for the same reasons. "Things must have changed more than I thought while I was . . . stored away. Any priest or shrine-keeper worth their salt should have been able to tell there was something off about you, even if they weren't sure exactly what it was." 

_Mazoku? I'm part . . . that?_ And there was no way I could see it could have happened except on purpose. 

"So I _am_ someone's fucking experiment, after all," I muttered. "And probably recycled somehow." If I was a clone or something else weird, that might explain why Val knew me when I didn't know him . . . but . . . 

"No," Val said firmly. "You broke with the other Mazoku after being cursed with a human soul and bound in a human body. It was intended to rob you of your identity and sap you of your power, but that part didn't work very well. But whenever you manage to get yourself killed, as you do every few hundred years, the soul you're tied to forces you into a skewed version of the normal human reincarnation process. Right now, your astral body, where most of your memory and power are stored, still hasn't reconnected properly with the physical you. Which is why you don't remember who you're supposed to be." 

"And who _am_ I supposed to be?" 

Val shook his head. "I promised you a long time ago that I wouldn't tell you that if you didn't already know. It slows down the reintegration." 

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. My head was starting to hurt. "In case you hadn't noticed, there is _someone_ after my fucking ass, or possibly yours, who's blowing up buildings with magic bombs. And I don't have any defenses against them except you. _Assuming_ that you're telling the truth, shouldn't you be doing whatever it takes to get my memory back?" 

"There's an emergency option," Val said with a grimace. "I'll use it if it looks like we're in serious danger." 

"Why not now?" I demanded. 

"Because it disorients you, and you tend to lash out when you're disoriented. I think Sairaag's been blown up enough times." 

"Shit. You're not kidding, are you?" I paused, considering my next question. "Where do you fit into all this?" 

Val shrugged and said, simply, "I'm yours." 

"My what?" 

"Whatever you want me to be." 

"Why?" 

"Because you're everything to me." 

_You can't be serious._ But there was no hint of falsehood in those golden eyes. No hint of falsehood in him. 

Suddenly, I noticed the clock on the bedside table. _7:53_ , it said, and all thoughts of Mazoku and weirdness suddenly took a back seat. 

"Shit, I'm running late. I need to be at the airport in half an hour to pick Alya up, and it's going to take me almost that long to get there." 

" _Eserai Guat,_ " Val said. There was a _whssht_ sound and a faint, soft light, and suddenly I didn't feel sticky or sweaty anymore, and the sheets under my hand were crisp and clean. Even the air no longer smelled of much of anything. "Not as pleasant as a shower, I admit, but a lot quicker. Do you want me to come with you?" 

I paused, thinking about it. Shook my head. "I think I'd rather she get the shock in small doses. I'll introduce you when we get back here. And if you hurt her, I'll tear your liver out and feed it to you." 

"If it's your will, I'll defend her to the last drop of my blood." 

Again, that unexpected sincerity—and the fucking flowery phrasing, although that just seemed to fit Val somehow. "You'd better," I said, and he somehow managed to bow gracefully from the waist. 

"Given what happened yesterday, I should spend a little time warding the house in any case, or we may wake up tomorrow to find it burning down around our ears. I take it we don't have any neighbours, or they would have been pounding on the door last night." 

I shook my head, already fishing through a dresser drawer. At least there was no laundry to pick up, since none of yesterday's clothes had survived the night. "The next house over has been for sale for more than a year. Knock yourself out." 

Val nodded. I dressed quickly and left before he could get out of bed. Seeing him naked just then would _not_ have made it any easier to put my pants on. 

My mind was a jumble as I headed for Flagoon Memorial Airport. If someone had pried my brain open, they probably would have seen a random arrangement of the words _Mazoku_ and _astral_ and _Val_ , mixed with one hell of a lot of question marks and some arrows that led nowhere in particular. I was a bit in shock, I guess. It isn't every day someone tells you in all seriousness that you're a legendary creature that feeds on negative emotions and is powerful enough to flatten a major city. 

I got there five minutes after Alya's flight did, and found her waiting by the baggage carousel with a sour-looking airline employee looming over her. 

"About time, Dad." 

"Sorry about that," I said. "Traffic." 

"You're her father?" The airline employee sniffed, looking from one of us to the other as though to say that we didn't _look_ like we were related. And we didn't—Alya, small-boned and blonde, took after her genetic father, the guy who had wrapped his car around a utility pole eight months before she was born. At least she hadn't taken after Eris. "Finally. I have better things to do with my time than baby-sit." 

Alya stuck her tongue out at the man's back as he left. "What an asshole," she said. "I hope you're not going to ask me how my trip was." 

I sighed. "No, I'm not. I'll try talking to the fucking lawyers again. Maybe hearing that you actually felt threatened while you were there will give them some room to negotiate." 

"I hope so. I mean, it isn't like she wants me there either. Just a sec, I think that's my bag." 

She grabbed it off the luggage carousel without any help, even though it had to weigh almost as much as she did. Once she had it on the ground, the wheels took care of the weight. 

"Let's go," she said, and charged straight for the doors without waiting for me. I shook my head—we might not be blood relations, but I often thought that Alya acted like a cross between me and a hyperactive ping-pong ball. I wondered what Val was going to think of her. 

She also had a fucking talent for finding the worst moment for everything. Or at least, that's my best guess at the reason that she waited until we were pulling onto the freeway to ask, "Dad, is that a hickey on your neck?" 

Somehow, I managed to avoid swerving into the path of a transport truck hauling a tank with several ominous symbols stenciled on it. 

"It's possible," I said. In a way, it was a relief that I didn't have to figure out how to bring up the subject myself, although I wished she'd attacked it from any direction but that one. 

" _Really?_ Do I know her?" 

"Him," I corrected. "And I can guarantee you've never met." 

"He's from out of town?" At least she seemed to be taking the "my dad is bi" part okay. One hurdle down, a fuckton more to go. 

"Sort of. And he's staying in our guest room. Don't give me that look, brat—he literally doesn't have anywhere else to go, and I . . . well, it's serious, okay? Shit, I'm making a mess of this." 

"Pretty much," my daughter chimed in. "Just don't tell me he's a nice guy. I've had enough of Mom's 'nice guys'." 

I snorted. "No, 'nice' isn't a word I'd use for Val. Not at all. 'Fucking crazy' would be closer." 

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" 

"Fucked if I know. You're the one who wanted me to tell you he wasn't a nice guy." 

"Not that way! Except . . . oh, hell. Why don't you just tell me how the two of you met?" 

"All right, but you're not going to believe it," I warned her. And then I told her. 

"That's _nuts_ ," she said when I was done. "So you're sleeping with a dragon sorcerer you pulled out of a hole in someone's backyard, and you think the two of you are in love even though you can't really talk to each other? Dad, are you out of your _mind_?" 

"It isn't as crazy as it sounds. He did manage to cobble some kind of translation spell together last night, even if it only really works between him and me. And I'm fucking _deadly_ serious about him at this point. It's like I was looking for him all my life without knowing it. If you really can't stand each other, we'll figure something out for the next few years until you're ready to move out—buy up the house next door or something . . . Fuck, I don't know. But I'm not giving up on him." That was just about the only thing I was sure about right now. 

Alya blew out a breath. "Okay. Okay. I'll try to give him a chance—that's all I can promise you." 

"That's good enough." 

"So, did anything else happen while I was being herded around by Mom's new boyfriend's stupid dog?" 

I smirked. "Well, someone blew my office up yesterday." 

" _Dad!_ " 

"I'm not kidding. If you like, I'll even swing by to give you a look." Then I wiped the smirk off my face. "It's possible they might try something again, brat, whoever they are, and not necessarily at the office. You know what that means." 

She scowled. "Yeah, I know. Keep my phone on me all the time. Keep it _on_ all the time, and make sure I charge it every night. Tell you if I change my plans any way at all, even if it's just being five minutes late leaving school. If I can't get you, tell Mazenda instead. This guy Val . . . does he count as a 'safe adult' for this?" 

_If it's your will, I'll defend her to the last drop of my blood._

"Assuming you can stand each other, yes," I said. 

"Wow, you really have it bad for him, don't you? You don't often trust people that much." 

"No, I don't," I admitted. 

Val was sitting at the kitchen table when we got home. He had a bunch of papers and old leather-bound books that I'd never seen before laid out around him, along with what looked like pieces of one of those geometry sets they make you use in school, except that, instead of cheap plastic, his stuff was made of metal and etched glass, and well-worn. He was annotating what looked like a plan of the house. 

"What's all this?" I asked. 

"An attempt to figure out how to ward an irregular space when I can't use the outside wall as a boundary," Val replied with a grimace. "I'm not really very good at this—I was never all that interested in non-destructive spells." 

"Emil seemed convinced that that 'Resurrection' thing you used on Kanzel was pretty high-level healing magic." 

If anything, Val's expression got sourer. "It's a long story, but the short version is that I spent a number of years as the captive audience of a golden dragon priestess who was bound and determined to stuff me with all the white and holy spells that she knew. A lot of which I can't cast without killing myself." 

"It's _really_ difficult to figure out what you're talking about when I can only understand one of you, but I guess you must be Val," Alya said. "You know, Dad, you could have told me he was cute." 

"He's also much to old for you." _Mine!_

" _Ew._ I didn't mean anything like that." My daughter and my . . . lover . . . stared at each other for a moment. Then Alya stabbed a finger at him. "If you hurt my dad, then I'll make you wish you'd never been born, mister!" 

"If I hurt him, I'll deserve it," Val said, adding, "She reminds me a bit of Lina Inverse. The temper, anyway." 

"Did he say something about Lina Inverse?" Alya said. "I knew those stories went way back, but I didn't know they were _that_ old." 

I sighed and translated. "I didn't know those fairy tales went back to the pre-Plague years either," I added. 

"Fairy tales?" Val smirked. "Oh, I bet that would piss her off no end. She always used to throw fits when someone got the facts wrong." 

"Wait a minute—you mean Lina Inverse was a real person? Someone you knew?" 

Val nodded. "You knew her too. Actually, the two of you spent several months trying to kill each other at one point." 

I winced as a sudden stab of pain ran through my head. 

— _skinny orange-haired runt's looking at me like I've just punched her in the face. Good. It's been an interesting fight, but it's long past time to end it. Before Phibby gets any fucking ideas. What the hell is he trying to use her for, anyway? It bothers me that I still don't know. It might end up meaning my life_ — 

"Fuck," I muttered, and rubbed my forehead. 

"Are you all right?" Val and Alya both asked, not quite simultaneously, in different languages. Which made my headache worse. 

"I'm fine," I said. "And I hope you two don't mind going out for lunch, because there's practically nothing left to eat in the house. We'll go grocery shopping after that. By the way, Val, I've been meaning to ask—can you cook at all? Because I suck at it." 

Val shrugged. "I won't poison anyone—once I figure out how to work the equipment here—but I hope you don't mind eating the same things over and over again, because my knowledge is pretty basic. And don't ask me to bake anything." 

Still, we ended up picking up more real food than I think we'd had in the house since Eris had left. Just basic stuff, like carrots and eggs and milk and a roast of beef that Val promised he knew how to cook. People didn't even stare at us very much, or at least not for more than a few seconds at a time. I guess the news of Val's existence had gotten around enough that people weren't so surprised to see him. 

It was an ordinary family outing until we got back to the parking lot, in other words, and found the passenger seat of the car already occupied. 

The man sitting there had purple hair in a weird looking bowl cut and a wide, shit-eating grin that might have fooled a nearsighted two-year-old into thinking he was benign. My hands itched with the need to wipe it off his face. He pissed me off on sight, although I wasn't sure why. 

"So you did find him again. I have to admit that your ability to locate your master is unmatched. It must be one of the few things that dragon hybrids do better than pure Mazoku!" 

" _Xellos,_ " Val spat. "What the hell do you think _you're_ doing here? And if you say it's a secret . . ." He made a small but emphatic gesture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cleaning spell isn't canon, although I expect Lina must have known one.
> 
> And I have no idea why I keep inflicting myself with bratty child characters. Sigh. Alya's kind of necessary to the plot in this story, though.


	10. Days Gone By

"I can't have dropped in just to visit old friends?" Xellos asked. That grin of his never wavered, and I still couldn't see his fucking eyes. 

"We were never your friends," Val growled. "Since Beastmaster isn't around anymore to give you orders, you must need to have something done that's beyond your own power to accomplish. _Talk._ " 

Xellos sighed. "You're no fun at all . . . but then you never were. I make you angry just by existing, but baiting you tends to result in such immediate violence that I can't even enjoy my meal. And your master is even worse, since he's inedible." His eyes were purple, I discovered. Purple and slit-pupilled and he was looking directly at me. 

I smirked. "Well, don't you just say the nicest fucking things. You know, I haven't done any 'immediate violence' to anyone in a couple of days, and I'm starting to get bored . . . so why don't you quit stalling and answer Val's question before I get even _more_ bored?" It was pretty obvious that Xellos thought he knew me, so I wasn't going to let on that I didn't know him. 

"Mmm . . . Actually, it's more that I'm not permitted to tell you!" Xellos said cheerfully, but his expression was sinister. 

Val grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him up bodily, dragging him over the door of the car.. "Don't fucking give me that! You're not under anyone's direct control anymore. Unless someone woke up one of the pieces of Ruby-Eye, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed _that_ by now." 

"Well, now, that _is_ a secret," Xellos said, waggling one finger. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alya roll hers. She was watching all of this with relative calm . . . but one hand, hidden in the folds of my coat, had a tight grip on the fabric. I would have been happier if she hadn't seen this side of Val quite yet, but there was no changing what had already happened. 

"Do you have a death wish?" Val snarled. His eyes flashed red, and his fangs suddenly seemed more prominent. 

Xellos sighed. "Typical dragon—so very impatient. I'm sure everything will become clear in time." 

Val made a sound like _Ngh!_ and threw Xellos aside. The . . . Mazoku? . . . vanished with a pop halfway to the ground. 

_What the fuck was that all about?_ I wondered when half a minute had passed without Xellos reappearing. I looked at Val, who shook his head. 

"I need to think," he said. "Let's go . . . home." Hesitantly. As though he wasn't sure it really _was_ his home. 

"Yeah, sure," I said. "Let's go home." 

When we got there, Alya went upstairs to do whatever it was she did on weekends when half her friends still hadn't gotten back from wherever their parents had taken them for spring break, I put the groceries away, and Val watched me while he made tea. When he had the mug in his hands, he didn't drink from it, though. Instead, he stared at it for a couple of minutes, then muttered a spell that made the air shiver around the two of us. 

"Anti-eavesdropping," he said when I gave him a curious look. "Just in case Xellos has it in mind to spy on us, although I doubt he'll try." 

"I hope that means you're going to explain what the fuck was going on back there," I grumbled. 

Val made an irritable gesture. "It doesn't entirely make sense to me either. Xellos wants us to know he's around, that's clear. And either he's being too subtle for me, or he wants us to figure out what's going on for ourselves. Which would be one hell of a lot easier if you had your memory. I was never involved in Mazoku politics, unless you count being an assassination target of opportunity as 'involved'. You're the one who kept track of that shit." 

"Do you think he knows that?" I asked. 

"I have no idea. I've never been able to read him, and I don't know to what extent he can read either of us. At least his emotion-sensitivity wouldn't have helped him—he'd have had to fall back on the same tells as a human would use." 

"Who is he, anyway?" 

"The strongest of Beastmaster Zelas Metallium's surviving servants—you could call him a sort of defacto Dark Lord, although his power is nowhere near that of his late mistress. Which is why the "not permitted" thing bothers me. Either he owes someone a hell of a favour, or one of the surviving Dark Lords is running the show. The simplest explanation would be that it's Dynast, but any plan Xellos is involved in tends to turn into a fucking cat's cradle in fairly short order, so I'm not willing to bet on the simple explanation. Of course, the other option is Dolphin, and she . . ." Val shook his head. 

"Dangerous?" I asked. 

"More like unpredictable. She . . . it's as though there's more than one person inside her head. She can be completely stable and focused for centuries at a time, and then, for no visible reason, she'll turn around, discard all her plans, and proceed in a completely different direction." 

Well, if Val could have PTSD, then there was no reason some other Mazoku might not have multiple personality disorder. "So the question is, _why_ does Xellos want us to know that he's around?" 

Val grimaced. "He probably wants us to stop whatever plan his superior has in motion. Possibly with a side order of killing that superior or a high-level minion. He can't directly disobey his orders, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have . . . opinions." 

"And we have no idea what that plan is," I said. "Fuck." 

A nod. Val seemed to remember the mug in his hand for the first time, and took a gulp of his tea while I picked through my thoughts. 

"How strong are you, compared to Xellos?" It was the first question that came to mind, and I had a nasty feeling it was going to end up being important. 

Val was still frowning. "In terms of raw power I'm likely a bit stronger, but I'm . . . unbalanced, inside, so I have a hard time using everything I've got. He and I have fought a few times. Usually we've gotten interrupted before either of us could do much damage. I did almost kill him once, but there were so many extenuating circumstances that I don't think we can count on it happening again. You could squash him like a bug if you had access to your full power. Maybe even in your current state, I don't know. Given how he prefers to attack, you wouldn't be able to see him coming, but he might not be able to damage you much." 

I didn't even have a mug to fidget with, and just then I wanted one. The revelation that I was Mazoku, at least in part, had almost been driven out of my mind by events. I still wasn't sure I believed it, and I sure as hell hadn't fucking absorbed it. The only evidence I had was Val's word. He was powerful, he seemed utterly devoted to me . . . and he might be lying like a rug. 

"Val, if I asked you to leave, would you go?" 

Val's hand jerked. Tea splashed across his shirt. 

"Under these circumstances?" 

"Under _any_ fucking circumstances," I growled. 

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, let it out. "Circumstances are exactly what it would depend on, though. On how much danger I thought you were in, on whether you were asking or ordering, and on your reasons. I trust you, I respect you, I owe you more than I can possibly express . . . but I'm not going to lose you again." And when he raised his head to look at me, those golden eyes burned with determination. 

Really, I wasn't even sure what answer I'd wanted. Absolute, slavish obedience would have been annoying. Protestations that he loved me too much to ever leave my side would have been fucking creepy. 

_What do I want from you?_ More than just his body, that was for sure . . . although now that I'd had it, I wasn't going to fucking well give him up without a fight. I'd never had sex like that, where my partner was fully into even the rough parts. And he'd slipped into my life so comfortably. Like he belonged. 

_I think I might really love you._ Terrifying. 

Right now, though . . . I took a couple of steps closer to where he was leaning against the counter, putting myself firmly inside his personal space. He didn't shift away, still watching me, golden eyes fierce and yet . . . subtly vulnerable. 

I leaned down and kissed him, tilting my head to one side to avoid the horn. His lips parted for me immediately, and he made a soft, hungry sound that was like pure distilled sex. 

"Idiot dragon," I whispered against his lips. "I've only just found you, and I fucking well intend to keep you, understand?" 

_He_ kissed _me_ then—a thank-you without words. 

"Besides," I added in a more normal tone. "I can't have you running around loose beating up on people—it would give this area a bad reputation, and I'm _supposed_ to be looking after it." 

Val snorted. "I doubt you really care all that much, beyond your general hatred of failing at anything, and your affection for the girl." 

" . . . You're probably right," I admitted, although I wouldn't have said so to anyone else. I'd taken a bullet for Kanzel once, but I knew, and was pretty sure Val would too if I'd bothered mentioning the incident to him, that that had been the thing about not failing. Kanzel was under my command, and letting him get killed by accident would have meant I'd fucked up. Avoiding that was worth a couple of months of limping around because Doctor Raada had had to dig a chunk of lead out of my thigh. 

There was a long pause, but it wasn't an uncomfortable one. 

"Are you going to need the rest of the day to finish that?" I asked eventually, gesturing at the mess of books and papers and drafting equipment still on the table. 

"Actually, I think I'm going to need part of tomorrow to finish it," Val admitted with a grimace. "I'd be done already if I could just set a standard square ward oriented to the cardinal points, but I can't get the entire house inside one without getting part of the house next door and a chunk of street too. And there aren't any workable alternatives I can see—if we're staying here, we need some kind of protection in place, and moving somewhere safer would likely be problematic while we're looking after a human child. Especially with you all but shorn of your powers for the time being." After half a beat, he added, "Why do you ask?" 

I shrugged. "I was thinking of showing you around the local area. I don't know how long you spent here . . . before, but I'm willing to bet that a lot's changed since then, and you might like to be aware of the differences." 

"Hmm. I think it might be more useful if I showed you somewhere," Val said slowly. "Assuming you're willing to trust me and come along." 

I offered him another shrug. "Why not? Just let me tell Alya we're going out for a bit." 

There was a hum in my ears as I crossed the boundary of the half-forgotten soundproofing spell and went upstairs. Alya's door was ajar, but I knocked anyway, since I knew it mattered to her. 

"Come in, Dad." 

She was lying on her stomach on her bed, propped up on her elbows with her feet in the air and her tablet in front of her. The music coming from it wasn't the kind of thing I would have thought she was into, women's voices twining around and around each other: 

_Where do all the tears come from? (to my eyes)_

_With no memories, why should I cry?_

_I can never rest my soul until_

_You call my name, call my soul, from the heart._

"You haven't even taken off your coat yet," Alya observed, silencing the song with a swipe of her finger. 

I shrugged. "Val and I were talking. We're going out for a bit. I figured I'd tell you so that there weren't any surprises." 

"Oh. Okay." She returned her attention to whatever she was doing with that tablet. 

So much for parenting. I hated to think what she was going to be like as a teenager. 

Downstairs, Val had drawn something on the living room wall and was muttering to it. My ears popped as he finished, and I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. 

He sighed. "I promised you I'd protect her, right? This isn't a very good ward, and it doesn't cover the whole house, but it should make it more difficult for Xellos or any lesser Mazoku to get in without my noticing, even if I'm not here." 

"Better than nothing, in other words," I said, and he nodded. "So, where are we going?" 

Val smirked. "You'll see." 

Two steps put him beside me. He laid his hand on my arm and the world . . . twisted. 

I was surprised because I wasn't surprised. It felt like he was doing origami with the space around us, somehow, and part of my mind recognized the pattern of folds. 

When the world straightened itself out, we were standing in the middle of one of the oddest landscapes I had ever seen. The sky was the first thing I noticed, the first thing I think _anyone_ would notice, was the sky, not just pitch black, but twisting darkness layered on darkness. What light there was came from glowing reddish crystals that stuck jaggedly up out of the ground like the teeth of some giant beast. The sand underfoot was patterned in intricate swirls of black and gold. Off to our left, the patterns were being rearranged by the steady wash of water that had more glowing things moving around in its depths. To our right, there was a building that looked like a black version of one of the temples from old Sairaag, with three sides open to the air, delineated by lines of fluted pillars. 

The scenery cut off abruptly long before it reached the point where the horizon should have been, with the sky suddenly coming down in a straight line to meet the ground. 

That sky bothered me. I'd seen it before, I knew I had, but where? 

After a moment, I got it. That dream. That fucking dream about the three-headed dragon. The one that seemed to think it was me, or I was it. 

"Where the fuck are we?" I asked aloud. 

"A pocket dimension," Val replied. "Essentially, a small chunk of physical space not attached to the rest of the world, but accessible by folding space or passing through the astral plane. They're difficult to find if you don't already know where they are. You made this one, a long time ago, as a . . . retreat, of sorts." 

_I'd_ made it? Sky and all? Although really, it wasn't such a bad place. Kind of picturesque in a harsh sort of way. Curious, I headed over toward the building. The sand crunched softly under my boots. Val, following me, made no sound at all. 

The place was just as fucking weird inside as it was outside. More lines of pillars divided the interior into four areas, a large square centered up against the back wall with narrower rectangles at the open edges. Lights faded on as I climbed the three stairs outside the entrance. 

The furniture suggested . . . something like a cottage, I guess. The "room" nearest the entrance held a table with gold legs and a black stone top. Four matching leather-padded chairs were arranged around it, one of them big enough to hold me comfortably. Cabinets, shelves full of random shit, a rack holding a bunch of blunt swords and short spears—practice weapons? The big room beyond it held the biggest fucking bed I'd ever seen, two wardrobes . . . and, painted directly on the wall above the head of the bed, a startling picture of a battle. A lot of dying dragons and soldiers with swords kicking each other's asses. 

"Did we live here?" I had the feeling I already knew the answer. 

"On and off. Depending on what we were doing, we often had a place in the pure-physical, too." Val looked like he was feeling kind of nostalgic. I was feeling kind of horny, myself—seeing him and that bed so close together was . . . making possibilities pop into my head. Telling that part of my brain to shut up for a bit, I tried to distract myself by having a closer look at the mess in the narrow room on the right-hand side of the building. 

"Mess" wasn't quite the right word, really. Everything in the room was ruthlessly neat, it was just fucking cluttered. More racks of spears and swords and the occasional axe or whatever were crammed in here, but they were sharp and gleaming, unlike the ones by the entrance. Some of them were busted, though. Against the wall, there was a crude pinkish granite statue of a three-headed creature with blue pebbles for eyes. It was about as tall as I was, and overlooked a big leather-upholstered armchair. Beside the chair was a little table with a base made from what looked like a dragon's skull. 

"Relative of yours?" I asked Val, nodding toward it. Figuring he'd seen it before, and probably expressed himself long ago if it offended him. 

"Some asshole golden dragon general you killed near the end of the Shinma War. Really, I wish you'd killed more of those bastards. If you had, I might still have some actual relatives left." 

He was just close enough for me to slip my arms around him from behind and pull him back against my chest. He relaxed right away, sighing and closing his eyes. 

"It doesn't really hurt that much anymore," he continued quietly before I could say anything. "A bit of anger, a little bitterness . . . old embers without enough heat left in them to erupt into flame again. I've been the last ancient dragon since I was two hundred years old, after all. There's nothing of that part of my life left anymore, not even a chance at revenge—their killers died too, centuries ago." 

"Too bad." Another thing I wouldn't have dared say to anyone but him. Revenge is kind of out of fashion in the modern world. 

"Well, it could have been worse. I have it on good authority that they died with their hypocrisy exposed for everyone to see, knowing that they'd failed to either kill us all or acquire what they wanted from us. I couldn't have asked for better, really. Just lost a bit of closure." 

He wasn't telling the whole truth—even to himself—and we both knew it, but I figured it would do less harm to let him keep his illusions than to tear them down. 

"I've been wondering how the fuck we ever met," I said as a distraction, holding him close. "I don't think that dragons and Mazoku exactly go to each other's high school dances." 

It was the first time I'd used the word _Mazoku_ in reference to myself. It felt . . . odd, but not wrong. 

Val snorted. "Nothing so peaceful as that. I got pretty badly chewed up when the goldens attacked us, then I crash-landed on the edge of the Great Eastern Desert with a bunch of leaky holes in my hide and a six-inch chunk of some bastard's lance-tip cutting deeper into my guts every time I moved, and wandered off into the dunes with some fucking crazy idea about at least not letting them find my body—I didn't have enough blood left to run my brain properly, and it got worse with every step. I don't know what you were doing out there that night, but you saved my life. And since then, I've lived it for you." 

— _sitting there because you're a stubborn bastard, aren't you? Too weak to stand, but you aren't going to meet death lying down. And trading words with a Dark Lord as though it's nothing. You've actually got a lot of balls. I think I like you._ — 

"Are you all right?" 

"I don't know," I admitted, wincing at the headache. "I keep having these . . . waking dreams, hallucinations, I don't know what the fuck they are. This time I saw you, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the desert with no shirt on and bleeding cuts all over you. Your hair was longer, you didn't have a horn, and you were looking up at me . . ." . . . smiling tiredly, but with his eyes burning with their familiar golden fire. 

"That's exactly how it happened," Val said. "Which means that your memory must be starting to come back. Thank the Lord of Nightmares. We need you at full strength." 

I didn't know what to say to him at that moment. I really didn't. I was . . . kind of ambivalent about the whole memory thing. I could see how having massive Mazoku powers might be useful, especially under the circumstances, but the bits of the past I'd recovered so far hadn't been that pleasant. The one about Val had been the least disturbing, but the person I'd been at the time had been feeling more than a little on edge, focused as much on his surroundings as on the young dragon in front of him. As though expecting an ambush. 

"Do _you_ want me to remember?" I asked. 

" _Fuck_ , yes. Right now, it's like half of you isn't here—like the world's squeezed all the pride and all the confidence out of you and left you a shadow of yourself. Even your damned clothes look washed out. You shouldn't _be_ like this." A shiver ran through him—without being able to see his face, I couldn't tell what it meant, but I was betting on him being pissed off. 

I searched for a change of subject. "You know, I've been wondering for a while . . ." 

"Hmm?" 

"What the fuck is that thing supposed to be?" I pointed to the pink granite statue of the three-headed something, and felt Val relax against me again. 

"Oh, that. It's _supposed_ to be you, in your astral form. One of the Mazoku-worshipping cults carved it, but they weren't exactly expert sculptors." 

So my astral form (whatever the fuck _that_ was) had three heads, did it? And looking at it, the lump of rock might have been trying to be dragon-shaped . . . like the giant red three-headed monster that had spoken to me in that dream. 

"All right, but why is it _here_?" The question might cover my confusion a little, I hoped. 

Val chuckled. "Well, the high priest tried to summon you one day, and because you were bored, you popped in there to slaughter them for being an arrogant bunch of pricks. You kept the statue afterwards because it appealed to the more twisted parts of your sense of humour. Most of this stuff is trophies of one kind or another. You've had a lot of it since before I met you." 

Well, that at least explained why some of the weapons were busted. 

"Is any of it yours?" I asked. 

"On the other side," Val said, gesturing in the general direction of the bed. Damn, that bed . . . rumpled and unmade and oh-so-inviting . . . and the warmth of Val's body against mine . . . "Not that I have much that I don't carry with me. Books, mostly." He rubbed his lower back squarely against my hardening cock. "You don't have to try to hide it, you know. I'm glad to have you inside me anytime." He glanced up and back, and I caught a glimpse of his smirk, and of the fire in his eyes. "We've got a perfectly good bed, and this is about as private as we can get . . . Why hold back?" 

"Because I don't want you to end up walking funny." It was the best excuse I could come up with, and I knew it was lame even before I said it. 

Val's smirk widened. "I heal fast. Or am I not good enough for you all of a sudden, my lord?" He gave me a mock-unhappy look, eyes still burning. 

"Since when am I 'my lord' to you?" It was another thing that felt right even though I didn't know why. 

"Since about five minutes after I met you." Val's expression had returned to that familiar smirk. "Besides, I can't use your real name, not yet, and I _won't_ use a fake one, even if it's . . . surprisingly close. Now, are you coming to bed or not?" 

"What if I said I wanted to do you standing up?" I chuckled as the question produced a groan and a shimmying movement of his body. "No, I'll come to bed. Pushy dragon." 

Instead of letting him go, I shifted my grip on him and swung him up into my arms. Definitely heavier than a human. _And wriggly_ , I thought wryly, as he lunged up to steal a kiss. Well, I wasn't about to tell him to settle down, not when the motion made his ass rub against me just so. 

The bed really was huge. The black sheets were softer than I expected—silk?—and there was a single coverlet, hanging half off one corner of the mattress, that displayed an intricate pattern of bright colours. 

I put Val down on the black silk. "On your stomach," I growled—if he was going to go around calling me "my lord" then I was going to act the part. "Get those clothes off before I rip them." 

Val obeyed immediately, shucking everything he was wearing and lying down with his legs spread. He had to twist his head to the side because of his horn, so I could see a single golden eye, glittering like lightning. 

"You know, I've been thinking," I said, looking down at him. "Getting you out of a pair of pants just takes too fucking long. I should have you wear a skirt, or maybe a coat like mine, but with nothing underneath. For easier access." I grinned as he moaned and wriggled against the mattress. Eris had hated it when I talked like that, but Val clearly loved it. 

"It might be a bit awkward for fighting," he said huskily. "But if you want me to . . ." 

I chuckled and took off my coat and boots and shirt, dumping them on the floor beside the bed. "I considered having you just go naked, too," I said, using my fingers to trace the path of one of his longer scars, the one that wandered at a sharp angle down from his left shoulder to the middle of his back. "But I don't want too many people laying eyes on what's mine." The texture of his skin was fascinating. Smooth and soft, then mounded and twisted . . . "Speaking of which . . . I want to see those wings of yours." 

The close-up view of that was fascinating too. The flesh of his back bunched and strained, black scales sprouting through the skin, and then lumps pushed up, detached themselves and opened out, displaying wide black-feathered membranes supported by bony struts. He spread them out on the bed, black feathers on black silk. Softer than his skin, I discovered, at least until you burrowed down among the quills, fingers brushing against the membrane itself, making him moan and pant and twitch. 

"Sensitive there, are you?" I purred. 

"Have to be able to feel . . . air currents . . ." Val managed, then " _Ghk!_ " as my fingers found what must have been a very sensitive spot. He reached out with a spasming hand, and some sort of ceramic jar disappeared from a nightstand and reappeared between his fingers . . . then slipped and fell to the mattress as he missed his grip. "My lord . . . know you hate it when I beg, but . . . need you in me. Please!" 

The lightest brush of my knuckles at the base of one wing, and he all but went into convulsions. I'd never thought of myself as all that skilled in bed, but with Val I seemed to know exactly where to touch him, and how, and when, to make him moan and scream and arch his back and flutter his wings helplessly against the mattress. Hundreds of years of practice that I didn't remember, still there in my hands and my subconscious. 

The jar was filled with something pale green with about the consistency of hand lotion—I wasn't sure it was meant to be lube, but it looked like it would do the job. 

"Ass in the air," I ordered Val, and slapped one cheek for emphasis. He immediately got his knees under himself and raised his rump up off the bed. I ran a slicked fingertip over his asshole, feeling the muscle pulse and tremble. Then I pushed my finger inside him. 

His body opened smoothly for me, and that finger slid into a hot space that fluttered around it. It seemed to be trying to pull me deeper in, and Val keened as I rubbed his insides, firmly but not too hard. His cock twitched where it dangled down between his bent legs. 

"You're a total fucking cock-whore, aren't you," I said, amused. 

"Only if it's your cock. Fight to the death before I let anyone else touch me like this— _Gh!_ " His wings fluttered as I crooked my finger just so. "Need you," he gasped. "My mate, my lord . . . need you _now_." He wiggled his ass a bit to make it clear just what kind of _need_ he was talking about. 

I was already undoing my fly—not the easiest thing to do left-handed, but I managed. _Fuck_ , I was hard. I opened things up as much as necessary, no more, then pulled my fingers out of Val and rose up on my knees, slicking my erection quickly and positioning myself. 

He pushed back as I thrust forward, driving me deep inside him. Now it was my turn to groan, because he was hot and tight and _perfect_ , as though his body had been designed with sex between the two of us in mind. And maybe it had been. _He built himself with bleeding talons into what he thought we needed, then offered himself to us as a gift . . ._ How much control could a dragon—a Mazoku—a mixture of the two like Val—exert over his body? How badly did he want this? 

Apparently I'd paused for too long, because he rocked his hips, drawing away from me, then pushing back. Fucking himself on my cock. _Pretty badly,_ I thought, and felt another grin tugging at my mouth. When I drew myself back and thrust in again hard, he let loose that belling cry that shook everything around us, and red fire began to crackle warmly over my skin. Maybe if I'd been able to think about something other than the way Val's body felt under me and squeezing me and the desperate noises he was making, I would have remembered the little problem we'd had with clothes burning up the last time. I doubt I would have cared, though. 

I pounded into Val hard and fast until he screamed again and squeezed down on me, and the universe shattered and turned to white. 

It took me a couple of minutes for the world to start making sense again, for me to realize I was still lodged inside Val and my pants were crackling and flaking off in little black bits. _Well, fuck._ Hopefully something in one of the wardrobes would fit me, if I really had lived here once. 

"Thank you," Val whispered throatily as I pulled out of him, and for a moment I found myself caught in . . . 

— _wondering who came up with such a fucking stupid custom. But I don't have the option of not going through with it. We need these humans, these_ particular _fucking humans, or the ragged army of demons and mercenaries Phibby's raised to harass me is going to roll straight over this entire region. And at least the Fucking Stupid Custom doesn't require me to kiss anyone in particular. Hell, I could pick someone at random if I wanted to. The problem would be getting that person to agree to it. Good thing I have someone here who wouldn't fight me._

_"Play along," I mutter, and Val nods ever so slightly and tilts his head up while I lean down. But . . ._

_It isn't like I've never kissed anyone before, when it suited my purposes, but none of them had ever parted their lips in just this way and made the softest of hungry little noises to draw me in. Val isn't just letting me dominate him, he's participating enthusiastically in his own conquest, bombarding me with a sudden, unexpected wave of lust mixed with fear and uncertainty and embarrassment and a tang of self-hate, rich and delicious. Dragons always have such tasty emotions, and my feisty little hybrid ancient is no exception. I wonder whose face he's pasting over mine in his mind's eye to make this bearable. I'm sure as hell enjoying myself more than I should be, wondering what it would have been like to take this further, if there was any chance he'd let me._

_When we part, the humans around us fucking applaud, and Val's flushed and won't meet my eyes. It almost makes me want to apologize to him, but that's unthinkable, a sign of weakness that I'd never live down. I hope he'll get over it soon, because we're about to have a war and I'm going to need him._ — 

I sighed and laid down beside him. Somehow the black silk sheets had managed not to get sticky, although _we_ both were. Val pulled his wings in and rolled over on his side to snuggle up against me. Not sleepy, but very relaxed. 

_Did I ever tell you that I love you, or did the old me never quite figure it out?_ It stood to reason in a way. Could Mazoku even love, or had I only . . . gained the capacity . . . because of the human soul Val said I'd been cursed with? 

"We have to go back," I said. 

"Mmm. Now?" 

"Soon." I couldn't blame him for not wanting to move. I didn't either. Despite East Sairaag County's Mazoku infestation, right now everything in my life felt Just Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Deep-Sea Dolphin being insane used to be fashionable in fandom, but there's no canonical evidence for it as far as I know. I still found it amusing to suggest a way she could _seem_ sane when observed for a short period but also be stark raving bonkers. ;)
> 
> I don't normally quote lyrics in my 'fics, but the song Alya is listening to in this chapter haunted me the whole time I was writing this: "my long forgotten cloistered sleep (unreleased work of Xenosaga)" from Yuki Kajiura's _Fiction II_ album. Yes, I used it for a chapter title too. The transcription of the lyrics is not exact—I added the background vocal and removed a repetition.


	11. Just an Ordinary Day

Val growled at the diagram he'd just drawn on the wall, and bared his fangs at it for good measure. " _Fuck._ " 

"Not working, I take it," I said, looking up from the Sunday edition of the Sairaag Herald. News had been sparse enough the past couple of days that they'd interviewed Wizer Freion, _and_ he'd made the third page. The front page was mostly full of crap about some idiot who had disappeared while flying out to investigate the center of the Demon Sea. You'd think they'd learn not to do that. 

"No. I spent _hours_ on this fucking thing and there's _still_ something wrong with it." His hands were closed into white-knuckled fists. 

"Well, it does look kind of unbalanced." I'd thought so from the start, really—that it was heavier on the right. 

Val scowled at the wall, then at me, but it was more thoughtful than angry. "How do you figure?" 

I got up and went over to stand beside him. "It's these lines here. It's like there's too many of them or something." I pointed, careful not to touch the diagram itself. 

"Those are symbolic of—" Val stopped in mid-sentence. "Shit. Of course. Old book. Five then, three now." 

He took an eraser out of his pocket, rubbed out some of the lines, and redrew one, leaving a triangle where there had been a five-pointed star. Meanwhile I was wondering how the fuck I'd been able to tell him anything useful about magic. Memory bubbling up from my subconscious? Sheer luck? 

Val put his hand on the symbol and muttered a long string of words that I didn't understand—either the translation-thing between us didn't work on spells, or he didn't know what the words meant himself. This time, the complex diagram flared red for a moment, then settled into a sort of dark, sullen glow that didn't actually light anything up. Val nodded in satisfaction and moved to the kitchen to begin drawing again. Hopefully the rest of these would go a lot quicker. 

I was still staring at the thing, bemused, when Alya came in. "What'cha looking at, Dad?" 

"Val's spell," I replied. 

Alya looked at the wall. Blinked. "I don't see anything." 

Now it was my turn to blink. "What do you mean? It's right there." I pointed. 

"That's just a _wall_ , Dad." 

"Humans can't see it," Val said from the kitchen doorway. "Not without a spell, anyway. Mazoku, greater dragons, demons, and elves all have a built-in astral sense that humans don't." 

Alya wrinkled her nose. "So Dad can see the whatzit because he's part dragon? That isn't fair." Then she blinked again. "Wait a sec, how come you're talking like a normal person all of a sudden?" 

"I'm not, if 'talking like a normal person' means 'speaking the same language as you'. I figured out a way to build what's called an ur-language spell into the wards, so effectively anyone inside the house will experience any words they hear or read as being in whatever language they speak most fluently. Hopefully we won't run into any of the weirder side effects." 

"Be ready to do it at the office tomorrow too," I said, and reached out to pick up the paper again. 

My daughter had other ideas, though. "Do you think I could learn to do magic?" 

Val shrugged. "Most humans can learn at least a few spells, so yeah, probably. I can try to teach you a few easy ones if you like, but most of the ones I know are for making stuff blow up, and I think your dad would like to make sure this place keeps all its walls." 

"The insurance is already too fucking high," I told the folded newspaper, and Alya giggled. 

"Could Dad learn to do magic?" 

"He's forgotten more about magic than I'll ever know," Val said, and I repressed a groan. 

"You know, I hadn't been intending to tell her any of the really weird stuff. At least not until I understand it myself." 

Val blinked several times. "I hadn't even meant to imply anything about that, but I guess it came out differently in that octopus-ese everyone around here seems to speak these days." 

"Side effects," I muttered. "Right." Suddenly, the language spell seemed like less of a good idea. 

" _What_ weird stuff?" Alya demanded. 

"Val knew me in a past life, sort of." At least that didn't drag Mazoku into it. 

"There's no such thing as past lives," my daughter said primly. 

Fuck, I could feel a headache coming on. "That's what I thought, until I started to remember shit about it." And then there was a certain pair of trousers, in a distinctly not-modern style that involved a criss-crossed drawstring at the front, that had fit me with tailored exactness when I'd found them in a wardrobe in that crazy pocket dimension. If I hadn't been convinced already, that would have done it. 

Val approached us, reaching sideways into nothing and pulling out a half-inch stack of what looked at first like small pieces of paper. "Maybe these will help." 

They turned out to be photos—a handful of really old black-and-whites. And the topmost one was of . . . me. Startlingly different, with long hair down past my knees and a sword slung across my back, but recognizable. 

"Shit," I muttered, blinking, as he spread them out on the coffee table. They were mostly of me. Me and him, a lot of them, sometimes with some other people. I picked up one that showed Val, asleep, leaning against my shoulder, and me looking down at him with a hint of a smile on my face. _Can I keep this?_ I didn't quite dare ask out loud, but I wanted to. 

"We must have known Kelsan for a good fifteen years," Val said. "I think he went through three cameras during that time. That was back around 1150 After Kouma, so the technology was still a lot more primitive than what you guys have today. Hell, I'm not even sure just how long I was stuck in that stupid hole—at least several centuries, I guess." 

"Well, the calendar was changed a good four hundred years ago," I provided, and saw him wince. "Don't you _dare_ go getting depressed on me," I growled. 

Val gave me that razor-edged grin of his and bowed from the waist. "As my lord wills," he said. Alya giggled. We both ignored her. "Really, it isn't a big deal—I was hatched in the third year after the end of the Kouma War, so four centuries isn't so much." 

I smirked. "You look awfully good for a two-thousand-year-old." 

"Prime of life for a dragon—and since you're twenty times my age, you have no right to talk." 

That made me blink. "Seriously?" 

"That's what you told me. There are certainly records of you going all the way back to the Shinma War, or there used to be—I get the impression that a lot of books and such were lost during this Plague of yours that I missed." 

"We were doing the Plague Years in history class before the break," Alya offered. "A lot of people figured the Plague had to be created by magic, so they went after books about it on purpose. And . . . not just books. They burned down the entire city of Seyruun—that's, um . . ." 

"East of here, and a bit north," Val said. "I've been there. The libraries were impressive, but it was too full of white magic for my taste. I mean, the entire city was laid out as a lesser ward against Mazoku—I felt like there was something crawling over my skin the whole time I was there, and it _wasn't_ King Philiomel's public justice speeches that were the problem. Although they were bad enough." He shook his head. 

"It's just a city now," I said. "Not all that different from Sairaag." Although come to think of it, the one time I'd been there, I'd felt a weird prickling when I'd passed a still-standing section of the original city wall. At the time, I'd told myself it was my imagination, but now . . . 

It was weird, but I seemed to have accepted all the way down to my subconscious Val's claim that I had originally been a Mazoku, and still was to some degree. More proof that he was right, I guess. 

"It might as well be a different world altogether," Val said. "But I expect I'll get the hang of it eventually. And I should finish with the wards—leaving them half-done for too long could cause problems." 

He went back to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Alya and the newspaper and the photos. I was still holding the one of him sleeping with his head on my shoulder. I wanted so badly to slide the damned thing into my pocket, but instead I set it back on the coffee table. 

"So," I said to Alya. 

"So what?" 

"Do you think you and Val can get along, or should I start budgeting for two mortgages?" 

"I think . . ." my daughter said slowly. "I think he's crazy. But not a bad kind of crazy, like those guys Mom brings home. I think he really does love you, and he doesn't want to hurt you. _And_ he treats me like a grown-up, mostly. I think we can make it work, if we all want it to. And I want you to be happy. You've smiled more since I got back than I've ever seen you do before, even when I was little." 

_Val . . ._ I couldn't claim I hadn't felt it. Something in me seemed to relax just from being around him. "Thanks, brat. You don't know what this means to me." 

She smiled cheekily. "And I didn't even make you try to bribe me. You realize Mom is going to have a fit when she finds out. She might be okay with you moving on if it was a woman, but not with another guy. Especially not with a guy who's almost as un-girly as you are, with all those scars. He looks like he should be playing in a metal band." 

"You can suggest it to him," I said, and Alya giggled. "As for your mom, I don't care what she thinks. It isn't like _she_ was slow to 'move on', once she had the chance. Now. I know you had homework over the break. Did you get it all done?" 

_The joys of parenthood,_ I thought as my daughter gave me a nasty look. It was probably a good thing that Val and I couldn't have children together. They'd probably turn out to be complete little terrors. With horns. 

Shit, was I seriously . . . ? Yes, I was, I admitted to myself. Val didn't seem to want to go anywhere, so now that I knew Alya approved, he was going to be my husband as soon as I could convince him to sign the papers. Although I supposed I should ask him formally, just to make sure we were both on the same page. 

"I have most of it done," Alya said, and wrinkled her nose. "There isn't much else to do when I'm at Mom's, but there are a couple of videos I couldn't watch because the bandwidth there was so crappy. I understood the lessons without them, though." 

"Still," I said, striving for _that_ tone of voice. 

"Da- _ad_ . . ." 

"If your teacher assigned them, she had a reason for it. Go finish up." 

Alya headed toward the stairs, but she was dragging her feet. "When am I ever going to need to know what the capital of Zephilia is, anyway?" 

I didn't have an answer for her, since I had no idea what the capital of Zephilia was myself—we'd kind of skimmed over the details of the northern nations when I was in school, and I hadn't needed the information since, so I'd never looked it up. I did pointedly unfold the newspaper again, though. Charity drives, an interview with the mechanic who had worked on the idiot Demon Sea explorer's airplane, peace conferences, international trade treaties . . . the sound of Alya's footsteps climbing the stairs. Comics, a lot of which I didn't get the humour in. The sound of a bedroom door slamming shut. I sighed, folded the paper, and picked up the book I'd been working my way through instead. A history of the centuries just before the Plague. After having Val drop into my lap, I figured I needed more history. Someone else might have turned on the TV, I guess, but I'd never liked the damned things all that much, so I'd moved the only one in the house to Alya's room when she turned ten, and never really felt the lack. 

I flipped to the back of the book. The genealogies of the major royal families were at the back, and Val had mentioned a King Philionel of Seyruun . . . oh, wait, here he was. Philionel El Di Seyruun . . . what a mouthful. Born 973 AK, reigned from 1021 to 1038 AK. No sons, but he had had two daughters, each of whom had taken the throne after him. Only the younger one, Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, had managed to have any kids of her own— _five_ of them, fuck, when had she had time to do queeny stuff? Anyway, that gave a pretty clear timeline for Val's visit to Seyruun. I wondered what it had looked like then . . . 

A blurry image flickered briefly before my mind's eye: a white-walled city laid out in the form of a six-pointed star inside a circle. Or at least it had started out that way, before a crater had bitten a chunk out of it somewhere near the ten o'clock position. I blinked. _Fuck, is that . . . ?_ Even if it wasn't as intense as the flashbacks I'd experienced while I was around Val, I was _certain_ that the city was Old Seyruun—my _memory_ of Old Seyruun. 

I gripped the arms of my chair hard to hide the tremor that was suddenly running through me. _Never show weakness._ Even though there was no one else in the room and a bead of cold sweat was running down my back. _Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit!_ The flashbacks were one thing. They were distinct from my normal thoughts, but if I was starting to get ordinary memories of this crap . . . I felt like there was a huge dark mountain looming above me and poised to fall on my head. _You're twenty times my age,_ Val had said. And he was around two thousand years old. Forty _thousand_ years' worth of stuff I'd forgotten pouring into my head would bury Gavin Drakkon's mere forty-eight years utterly. 

I wanted to fill in the missing past I shared with Val, but at the same time, the idea scared me shitless. And I couldn't admit it, couldn't show it to anyone. I was just going to have to deal with my doubts myself. 

_Mazoku. Very old, very powerful Mazoku._ But my hands didn't look like they belonged to a supernatural being—just ordinary hands, big and a bit rough, with some callus and a faint scar on the outside of the left one from some drunken brawler coming at me with a knife when I was trying to haul him back to the van. 

_Who the fuck am I?_

There was a rustle, a thud, and a loud, "Fuck this shit and the horse it rode in on!" from the entryway. I put the book aside and went to have a look, wondering what the hell Val was doing now. 

I found him sitting cross-legged on the welcome mat, trying to disentangle himself from my coat, which had him snuggled up in a warm embrace. A single knitted pink mitten hung from the tip of his horn. I looked at him with both my eyebrows raised. 

"Next time you're shopping for a house, pick something where none of the corners of the building is inside a fucking coat closet," he said, scowling. 

I laughed. Harder than I had in a long time. I couldn't fucking help it—I think it was the mitten, one that Alya had never much liked and had outgrown years ago. 

"Y'know, Val, if I'd known you wanted a horn-warmer, I'd have gotten you one as a Ceiphiedmas present." 

Still scowling, Val blinked. Reached up. Found the mitten, pulled it off his horn, and held it up in front of his face. Blinked again. Then, ever so slowly, he began to laugh too. 

"A horn warmer," he said with a final snort. "There wouldn't be any point, you know—it's inert." 

"And in the way, from the look of it." 

He shrugged. "Sometimes. I'm used to it. And I usually stay out of confined spaces." He gave the coat closet one last evil look. 

I reached out and ran my fingers over his horn—I'd grabbed onto it before, but usually when I was too busy kissing him to pay any attention to the horn itself. It was warm and hard and textured, banded horizontally, and firmly anchored to his skull. 

"As foreplay, this lacks something," Val said, one eyebrow arching upward. 

"Maybe I don't want everything between us to be about sex and violence." What would Val say if I admitted I wanted to cuddle him? I wouldn't, of course. Admit it, that was. Too fucking embarrassing. 

"Our lives have been about violence, mostly. Sex, only when we've had the time." But he was smiling that quiet, tired smile again. "Although we have had our quiet moments too, now and again, over the years." 

"Yeah, but I don't _remember_ any of them right now," I pointed out. "So part of me still thinks we're breaking every possible speed record in setting up a relationship. Not that I give a flying fuck, but you're not supposed to have the happily-ever-after without having the fairy tale first." 

Val stopped working on disentangling himself from my coat, and looked up. "Oh, believe me, we did the fairy tale part. Terrible ordeals, involuntary separations, war and hell and death. I even managed to work in a stepmother, although it would have been easier if she'd been evil, really. Then you might have been able to control her, instead of me having to sneak out through the damned pottery shop in the middle of the night so that I could go look for you without her knowing about it." He finally got loose from the tangled mess of belt and sleeves, and stood up, dusting off his knees. "Most of our life together's been shitty in all ways but the 'together' part. Remembering it isn't much fun sometimes, but not remembering it was worse—I did fifteen years of that, of not _knowing_ what I wanted or why I sometimes felt so torn up inside, and it was pure distilled hell. I don't want that for you." Then he winced. "Apologies, Lord G—my lord. That was . . . forward of me." 

"You know, there's something else you called me yesterday that I liked a lot better than 'my lord'," I told him. 

"I . . . did? I'm sorry, my lord, I honestly don't remember." 

I grinned. "Well, you _were_ in the middle of begging me to fuck you through that mattress. 'My mate' ring any bells?" 

"I . . . oh, hell, I didn't mean to say that out loud. Talk about being forward." Val grimaced. 

"Would I have punished you for that? Before?" 

"No, but there would have been repercussions if anyone ever found out. Mazoku adhere very strongly to a pecking order. There's no protocol for a relationship of equals between individuals of different power levels, and you've always been stronger than me." 

"Fuck that," I growled. "We've been together—we've been _lovers_ , for fuck's sake!—for hundreds of years, and you _still_ think you should bow and scrape to me?" 

"Only around other Mazoku, and sometimes by reflex. I keep _telling_ you, it's more efficient to just keep up appearances than it is to squish a couple of minions every time they—" Val stopped in mid-sentence and shook his head. 

"Old argument?" I said, feeling a grin break out again. 

"Very. Still, I have to admit, you always did a better job of holding our forces together than I was able to manage when you weren't available. Charisma, I guess. And, of course, there's the minor fact that no Mazoku except you would ever accept me. Even with your backing. They never really considered me one of them, and what respect I got I mostly earned the hard way." 

When I looked him in the eye, he gazed back steadily at me with the least hint of a frown still on his face. 

"What are you going to do if I never do remember completely?" I asked him. 

"What do you mean, what am I going to do? You're still you. The state of your memory doesn't change my feelings. I told you, I'm yours. Without question or reservation." 

"Faithful little dragon. I knew I didn't fall for you just because you had a tight ass." 

" _Ew_ , Dad, that's _way_ too much information." Alya was at the top of the stairs, looking down at us. 

"Get used to it, brat, because things like that are probably going to slip out now and again." 

"I'll put a soundproofing spell on our bedroom door so that you don't have to listen to the worst of it," Val added with a smirk. 

"Ew, ew, ew! Now I'm going to have to find some brain bleach. Thanks a _lot_ , Uncle Val." 

That made me laugh again, for the second time in ten minutes. 

Maybe Val really was good for me.


	12. Darkness on a Rampage

Monday morning started out routine—the new routine, the one that had me pulling myself out of bed when Val started to stir beside me, then sparring with him in the backyard, and showering while he made breakfast. Eggs and bacon and toast and tea, then make sure Alya made it out the door for her first day back to school after the break. Val cleaned up the dishes with a word and a wave of his hand, and we both piled into my car together and headed for the office. 

That was where the routine broke down, the moment I saw the box of doughnuts on the corner of Mazenda's new desk. I wasn't the only one unhappy about it, either. Val glared at the box as though it had six legs and a stinger and was about to threaten his ankle. 

"Where is that PBI bastard?" I growled to Mazenda. 

"Y'r office," she mumbled, and took another swig of her coffee. 

What could Wizer Freion possibly want here? It wasn't as though we'd learned anything else about old man Axel's murder. If Val was right, I expected we wouldn't ever find out exactly who had killed him, since I got the impression that minor Mazoku were pretty much interchangeable. 

I walked past Wizer and Emil without looking at them and dropped into my chair, grateful for Val's steady presence at my shoulder. 

"I thought we'd seen the last of you," I said, eyeing the PBI duo with distaste. Emil, I noted, looked like he was going to throw up. He also kept sneaking glances at Wizer. My guess was that he's complained about something the older man had ordered him to do, and Wizer had told him to keep his mouth shut. 

"Actually, it isn't you I'm here to see, Sheriff." Wizer glanced at Val, or at least I think he did. It was hard to tell with his eyes squinted shut like that. 

_He reminds me of Xellos,_ I realized. Another reason to hate both of them. 

I decided to play dumb. "Then why _are_ you here?" 

"Well, I have a warrant I need to serve." Wizer pulled a folded piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his sport jacket and laid it on the table. "For one Val, no last name." 

" _What?_ On what fucking charge?" I snarled. 

"Being an illegal alien and an unregistered sorcerer." 

I slammed both hands down on my desk. The legs made an ominous cracking sound. "Cut the crap, Wizer! The sorcerer registry was defunded more than a hundred years ago . . . and you're not a Customs and Immigration Officer _or_ a member of the Bureau of Magic Enforcement, not that the Bureau even exists anymore! I thought I warned you last time about what would happen if you fucked with me!" 

Wizer smirked and laced his hands together. "Yes, you threatened to lock me up. However, your cells are buried under several tons of fallen concrete now, and the Sairaag City Police aren't likely to go along with you on imprisoning a PBI agent on trumped-up charges—" 

I gave him a nasty grin and cracked my knuckles. "Who says they need to know? Beat you up, break your jaw, confiscate your badge and your piece . . . do you really think you'd be able to convince them that you're from the PBI if you've got no proof and can't talk properly?" 

It got rid of his smirk, at least. And got him to open his eyes. "You really would, wouldn't you? You have no fear of consequences. No fear at all." 

"You mean that wasn't in my file?" I asked him. "Now. Cut the crap and tell me what you really want, or I'm taking that so-called warrant and feeding it to you." 

There were several seconds of silence. In the outer office, Mazenda picked up a phone call. "East Sairaag County Sher— _What?_ That's— _Boss!_ " 

"What _now_?" It had to be fucking important. Mazenda knew better than to interrupt me for anything that wasn't. 

"It's the junior high. They're . . . under attack by some kind of—" 

My cell rang, and I just about ripped it out of my pocket, glancing momentarily at the display to confirm that the call was from the person I expected it to be from. 

"Are you okay, brat?" I tried to keep my voice down. Ceiphied knew what kind of situation she was in. 

"For right now, yeah. I'm hiding under the teacher's desk in one of the eighth-grade classrooms. They haven't gotten here yet. Inside seems to be safer. Outside, they can see you from up above. I think . . . I think my teacher is dead." 

"Alya. Who are 'they'?" I was just about grinding my teeth. 

"I don't know. Monsters. They're people-sized, but they're scary and they have magic and they use it to hit you from far away—" 

"Shit." I was willing to bet that she was talking about Mazoku. "We'll be there as quickly as we can. Stay on the line, okay? Wizer, I'm not done with you, but I don't have time to fuck around with you now. Val, you're with me." Not that that part needed to be said. I was pretty sure my dragon would follow me to hell and back. 

I pushed back my chair. Val grabbed me around the waist from behind, space folded around us, and we were instantly . . . several hundred feet up in the sky? 

"Neat trick," was all I said, pushing aside the question of why we weren't falling. More magic, obviously. 

"I figured you wouldn't want to waste any time. The school must be that L-shaped building over there, with the spell-flashes coming from it." Val seemed almost disturbingly calm as the universe hiccuped around us again and dropped us on the roof of the school. 

There was one other person on the roof, a girl who might have been fifteen years old . . . if she was human, which I doubted. She had dark blue hair in a braid down her back, and wore a sort of double-layered knee-length jacket in a lighter shade of blue, over white leggings. In one white-gloved hand, she held a sword with a black blade. 

"Sherra," Val said. 

"Hmm?" was the girl's reply. "Have we met? Oh, wait—green hair, scars all over, horn, and that filthy dragon-tainted aura . . . you must be the Chaos Dragon's pet, the one they put the kill order out on after Lord Phibrizzo dealt with your master. Has his resurrection really made you that bold? Should I be honoured that you came here in person, Gaav the Renegade?" 

Something flashed through me at that moment. _Of course. Gaav, not "Gavin"._ Val had spoken my real name more than once already—I just hadn't picked up on it. He and I needed to talk . . . but first, this arrogant brat . . . 

I drove forward at her as fast as I could, and the world blurred around me as a strange force seemed to flare throughout my body. Sherra began to jump, but it was like she was moving through molasses. I intercepted her arc and slammed her down on her front on the roof, with my knee digging into her back and my hand pulling back on her braid. 

"That's still _Lord Gaav_ to you," I growled. "Val, go clean up the small fry. I'll handle things here." 

"At once, Lord Gaav." It was the first time I'd been able to watch from the outside as he vanished, and I raised my eyebrows at the impression of black-and-white streaks that lingered for a second or two after he was no longer there. I felt Sherra trying to do something while I was distracted, and so I . . . well, it _felt_ like I grabbed her and slammed her down again, but with a limb that I didn't actually have. Or something like that. The energy that was still fizzing through me seemed to know what it was doing, even if my conscious mind had no idea. 

I ignored the various sounds of explosions and mayhem now coming up from below, and asked Sherra conversationally, "So, did you just pick this school to attack at random, or was I supposed to take this personally? Because if it was the latter, you'll be glad to know it worked—I'm really fucking ticked off." 

"So my lord Dynast was right: you actually have reached a point where you care about the livestock. What an end for a former Dark Lord." She began to laugh shrilly, until I pulled even harder on her braid, bending her back like a bow. 

"What I care about is people messing with what's mine," I told her, and struck at her with . . . something. I still wasn't sure what the fuck I was doing or how I was doing it, but there was a dull sound of impact. Sherra jerked, and something dark started to leak out from underneath her. I also had a feeling like the first two fingers of my free hand were stuck in a bowl of cold pudding, although what the fuck _that_ was supposed to mean . . . 

Suddenly, the entire area went ominously silent, and I felt a cold prickle between my shoulderblades. Acting on instinct again, I let go of Sherra and dodged to the left as fast as I could, and felt something just whistle past me. 

"Well, it seems your reflexes are still good, _dear_ brother." The voice was a light baritone, and just hearing it somehow pissed me off. "You always were the most gifted of any of us in combat, although I _had_ hoped that our eldest sibling's trick would work a second time." 

"Is there a fucking point to this?" I snarled. Trying not to show how off-balance I was, because I had a feeling that if this pompous ass found out that I didn't know who I was talking to, it was going to be over. 

"Lord . . . Dynast . . ." Sherra pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Suddenly she coughed, and steaming black liquid splattered the roof. There was a hole in her body just below the left breast that seemed to be leaking more of the same. 

"Hm? Oh, there you are, Sherra. Pull yourself together. You're disgracing me." 

_And I thought_ I _was an asshole._ But at least I didn't pull shit like that, especially not in combination with the fucking stupid disembodied-voice thing Dynast had going right now. Where the fuck was he? I turned my head slightly, and my nerves began fizzing even harder as I spotted a . . . sort of discontinuity in the sky. I wasn't sure I was _seeing_ it, exactly, but I made sure I was facing it as I growled, "I asked you a fucking _question_ , _brother_. Are you deaf?" Energy crackled between my fingers, and I took a step forward. There wasn't much I could do other than trust my instincts, and I hated it. 

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, unless you want your little pet hurt." The air rippled, and two figures materialized. One was a man with long black hair, finely-chiseled, classically handsome features, and cold, pale eyes. His clothes were rich, but extremely old-fashioned. Hell, he was even wearing a fucking _crown_ , a band of gold a good inch wide that was holding his hair back from his face. In his right hand, he held a knife, or maybe a dagger, with a blade that gleamed blue-white. 

He was holding it at Val's throat. 

Val wasn't struggling, and there was a bit of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, but his golden eyes were burning. He didn't look at all defeated or afraid, just incredibly pissed off. 

I froze in place and lowered my hand. 

"That's better," Dynast said. "I must admit that I'm impressed you managed to create such a useful servant out of this dragon trash, but you're altogether too fond of it. Still, it _is_ your last follower, I suppose, as well as your most powerful." 

"For the _third fucking time,_ " I spat, "is there a _point_ to this, or did you just come here to ask me for tips on how to piss people off? Either way, you're doing a shitty job so far." 

Dynast tilted his head slightly to one side. "That foul mouth of yours always gets worse when you're worried about something—I noticed that millennia ago. Would you like the little dragon back? Or maybe it's something down in the school below that has you so concerned?" 

The energy that had been just under my skin since Sherra had spoken my name began to bubble up uncontrollably. I felt the weight come off my feet as I rose several inches off the roof of the school, with a sudden cyclone of wind developing around me, making the skirts of my coat flap. I smirked. 

"Val will understand if I go right through him to get at you," I said. It was a lie, of course, but it served its purpose: Dynast looked startled, and his grip on the pale-bladed knife slackened slightly. Val's wings shot out from his shoulders, slamming his captor in the chest and jaw. Dynast made an inarticulate noise as he lost his balance for a moment, and Val ducked and lunged forward, out of range. 

Power was still gathering inside me, and I arranged my hands in front of myself, collecting the stuff into a globe about the size of a soccer ball. Then I threw it, or maybe it was more like releasing it, at Dynast, trusting Val to stay out of the way. 

There was a massive _crumph-BOOM!_ I didn't hit Dynast squarely—he dodged too fucking fast—but I vapourized the part of the roof he'd been standing on, the air conditioning housing to his left, some trees, a chunk of the fence around the athletic field behind the school, the hill behind it, and most of the hill behind _that_. Not only that, but the sky darkened and went reddish. 

_Fuck,_ I thought incredulously as I dropped the few inches back to the mostly-intact rooftop below me, my hair settling messily around my shoulders. I'd produced enough destruction for a good-sized bomb, and I knew I hadn't given it everything I had. Not even close. The power was fizzing through me even more strongly than before, if anything. I might have used one-tenth of one percent. 

Of the three other people on the roof, Val was standing not too far to my left and rubbing his throat with a grimace on his face, Dynast was scowling at me while sizzling black dripped down his left arm, which had been in the path of my blast, and Sherra . . . was only half there, the right side of her body cut off in a neat curved line starting from just below the armpit. Despite that, she was still clearly not only alive, but _conscious_ , looking up at her master as she knelt on her single still-connected leg. 

"My apologies, Lord Dynast, for failing to safeguard your assets." Her voice wavered as she spoke. 

"Don't worry, Sherra. I figured out a long time ago just how useless you are. Go home. I'll punish you later." 

"Yes, my lord." Sherra flickered away into nothing. 

"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered. I'd thought Dynast treated Sherra like a slave, but this went beyond even that. Did he think she was a robot? Was that . . . utter callousness to everyone around him . . . typical of the true Mazoku? _I'm starting to think I'd be happier if someone told me I was related to a fucking sea cucumber than this shithead._

"We'll continue this at another time, _dear_ brother," Dynast said. "I should have known you would come straight out and try to start a war, but I'm not going to give you that advantage. Until later." When he vanished, he left behind a few sizzling drops of black. 

_Start a war?_ I hadn't actually been trying to, but when I turned the idea over in my head, I decided I wouldn't mind at all if I managed to do it somehow. 

"Looks like they're all gone, unless one of them's deliberately trying to hide. And a lot fewer of them got away than came here in the first place." Val smirked. "I just wish I'd been able to get them all before Grauscherra came looking for me. I'm surprised he actually showed himself. This must be the first time he's left the north since Lina Inverse handed him his ass." 

"Are you all right?" I asked him. 

"Yeah, just a little frostbite across my throat from that knife of his. It should go away over the next half-hour or so." 

"Is that—" I didn't understand the word that came from my mouth next, just knew it _was_ a word even if it sounded more like a modulated growl. "—really my brother?" I slapped down the part of me that knew I only had one fraternal twin sister who wasn't actually related to me. 

My human life was starting to seem more and more like a thin veneer over an abyss. The energy under my skin hadn't gone away with Dynast. It had just settled a bit, like a cat falling asleep in my lap. I pulled a little of it out, let it arc between my fingers. Let it die down again. _Fuck, this is weird._

"I don't think there's a simple answer to that," Val said. "Pure Mazoku don't really have families. From what I understand, you were both created directly by Ruby-Eye at around the same time—you're very slightly older—but you both came into existence as adults and without any emotional bond linking you." He smirked. "Besides, if you're going to claim Dynast Grauscherra as your brother, that would make Sherra your niece. And Xellos your nephew, since it would be weird for you to acknowledge just one of your four pseudo-siblings." 

"Ugh." My impression of Sherra was more of a silhouette, a cipher lacking in internal detail, but Xellos, like Dynast, pissed me off. "I think I'll just think of it as us all having had the same sperm donor or something." Absently, I ran my hand through my hair . . . and through . . . and through . . . There were long strands of blood-red winding around my fingers. Straighten out those strands, and I would have bet I'd have hair that went all the way down past my knees, like it did in those photos of Val's. "The fuck . . . ?" 

"It grew out when you invoked your power. I'm glad. I've missed it." 

"It's going to get into everything," I grumbled. 

Val shook his head. "I doubt you'll find it much of a problem. Even with it cut short, you were still trying to flip it forward over your shoulder to keep from sitting on it—the reflex is so ingrained I'll bet you never even noticed yourself doing it." 

"And I'll bet the fucking barber's booked solid until next Thursday." 

Val didn't say anything, but . . . 

"You want me to keep it this way, don't you?" 

"Yes, I do. I'm sorry if that's being forward of me, Lord Gaav." 

Funny, how the title bothered me less when he attached my name to it. "Idiot dragon—didn't I tell you not to worry about that stupid Mazoku pecking order shit? If you like my hair that much, I'll try keeping it long, but I'm not sure how much patience I'm going to have for straightening it out when it ends up in a fucking tangled mess." 

"You need to tie it—just a second." Val produced a length of what looked like leather thong and went around behind me. He used his hands to scoop my hair together at the nape of my neck, then began to work his way down my back. 

"I've been meaning to ask where you're actually pulling all the stuff you wave around out of," I said as he reached my waist and dropped to a crouch. 

"It's an astral pocket—kind of like a much smaller version of the dimension I took you to. You have one too." Val tugged gently on my hair for a moment, then straightened up. "There, try that." 

I turned to face him, and felt my hair swing gently around behind me. "Better. If I've got one of those astral pocket things, then what do I keep there?" 

Val shrugged. "Several cases of beer. Some clothes. Camping gear. Weapons. Money. A copy of the Manual of Arms for the Elmekian Border Patrol, circa 1200 AK. The skull of a ninety-foot-long sea serpent that tried to take a bite out of you. And lots of other random crap. I'm not sure even you would remember everything you've stashed away over the years." 

_If I remembered anything at all beyond a few random scenes, half of which have to do with you,_ I thought wryly. "Why would I have a copy of anything to do with the Elmekian Border Patrol?" 

"We were working with a revolutionary group there at the time. You picked up copies of all the Patrol's ops manuals, and the army and Palace Guard ones too, but I remember that one in particular because you couldn't stop laughing when you were reading it. It was pretty bad." 

There was a sudden blare of sirens, and the Sheriff's Department's one surviving cruiser streaked into the teachers' parking lot and fishtailed to a stop. An ambulance followed only a little more slowly. _I guess this is my cue to stop stalling._

"Take us down to ground level," I told Val. "I need to find Alya, and then make sure there's no one left inside, since I've pretty much trashed the building." Not that I was going to admit that to anyone else—pinning it on the other Mazoku should be easy enough. 

Val snugged himself up against my side with one arm around my waist. This time, when he moved us, I not only felt it happen, I felt something inside me jerk reflexively as though I was trying to fold the space too, but without being able to get a solid grip on it. 

"Kanzel!" I yelled, and beckoned the blue-skinned deputy over when he looked up. 

"Boss! Just a second—" Out came his cell—faster than going back to the car to hit the radio, I guess, even though he wasn't _supposed_ to use the phone for work. "Maz, he's here—Val, too. They're both fine. Talk to you later." 

I rolled my eyes. "She's got you checking up on me now?" 

"Well, you two did kind of disappear on us. We were all worried, even Wizer and his assistant. We figured this was probably where you'd gone, but we didn't actually know. What the hell happened, anyway?" 

"Val and I got into a fight with a couple of Mazoku up on the roof. I'll tell you the rest later. I need to find Alya . . . unless she stayed on the line through all of that . . ." I fished my own cell out of my pocket, only to find it was dead, with black streaks on the case. Fried like an egg. "Shit. Okay. Val and I are going to go inside and sweep the building for survivors or corpses. You keep an eye on things out here, get a list of names so that we can notify next of kin, and help the paramedics if you have any brain cells left over." 

"Understood." 

We were not too far from the school's front entrance, and as we stepped into the hallway, I tried to remember what I knew about how the place was laid out inside. The short leg of the L-shaped building was the gym, I knew that, and the long one was classrooms, but not much more than that. And although the ground floor seemed to be undamaged except for some scorch marks, I didn't like the way the air smelled of ozone, blood, and death. 

"There are actually quite a lot of live humans in here," Val said. "Dynast's lackeys probably killed the teachers so that they could feed off the kids' fear. Probably a fair number of injured, though—they'd find pain tasty too." 

"And you?" I asked seriously. Because some of those brain-frying flashbacks I'd had had included the disturbingly pleasant flavours of those kinds of emotions. 

Val grimaced. "Part of me feeds off things like that," he admitted. "Just like any other Mazoku. It isn't something I'd have chosen if it didn't come with the package, and I try to ignore it as much as possible. I sure as hell don't go out of my way to create more negative emotions just to change the flavour—there's enough misery in the world that I'm never going to go hungry." He paused, then added, "You've always tended to pursue the type of emotional combination you prefer, but you never go out of your way to cause it either . . . and you're one of the few individuals in the world who could probably start a war all by himself." 

"I always did wonder why I dreamed about fighting all the time," I muttered as we stopped in front of one of the classrooms and opened the door. There were a bunch of kids inside, all huddled together in one corner. They all stared at us blankly. None of them was Alya, but I did recognize one of them as a friend of hers, and she was near the edge of the group. I angled over in that direction as I entered the room, ignoring the way they all cringed, and crouched down in front of her, minimizing my height as best I could—my size was useful when I was threatening punks, but a problem when I was trying to reassure little kids. "Mari. Hey. Are you guys all right?" 

She blinked several times. " . . . Mister Drakkon?" 

"You know him?" That was one of the boys. 

"He's Alya's dad—the sheriff," she said softly. "I don't know the other man, though." 

"Val works for me," I said. "I know he looks kind of scary, but it isn't his fault." 

"Does this mean the bad guys are gone?" said the smallest boy. 

"We chased them away." I kept my voice level and calm. "Now, is anyone here hurt too badly to walk? Part of the roof's fallen in, so you need to get outside before anything else comes apart, and we can't go with you—there are other people still in here, and some of them might be really hurt, or trapped. You're all big, strong kids, right? So you can make it on your own." I felt like an idiot giving that speechlet, and several of the kids looked at me like I was one too, but at least that meant they weren't in shock anymore. 

"Nobody's too badly hurt," said one of the bigger boys—on the precocious side, I guess, because his voice was starting to crack. "Just scratches and bruises. We'll get everyone out—Mari and I are class reps, so we should be able to do that much." 

I nodded. "I'll hold you to it." 

I checked under the teacher's desk on the way out, but there was no one there. 

We found a couple more classrooms full of scared-but-not-really-hurt kids, and directed them outside, although I wasn't sure how many of them believed us. The library and the science lab were empty. 

We found the first teacher—the first _dead_ teacher—in the computer lab at the far end of the ground floor. The computers were dead too, burnt out like my phone, and the glass on a couple of really old monitors jammed into a corner shelf had shattered. The teacher had been a woman, middle-aged and sandy-haired, and there was a hole all the way through her abdomen, wide enough that you could see the computer desk on the other side. 

I glanced at Val, who shook his head—no one alive in here. That meant we were moving on to the next floor. 

Three more dead bodies in the stairwell. One of them was a kid. It looked like he'd been an accident, since he had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of an artery rather than a hole through him. It made me feel . . . I don't know. Corpses in general don't bother me, but when I thought that it might be Alya lying there . . . let's just say I had to get rid of the idea fast, before I accidentally took out another wall. 

We found the first live adult on the second floor, half-in and half-out of a janitor's closet, out cold. He'd lost a leg from just above the knee, but had had the presence of mind to wrap his belt around his thigh and use it as a tourniquet, so he hadn't bled out completely. Val spent about half a minute teleporting him down to the ambulance. I made a mental note to check up on the poor bastard, just so it looked like I was investigating this mess. 

There weren't as many kids on this floor. A half-dozen in the first classroom. One in a toilet stall. Two hiding behind a sofa in the teacher's lounge, with a cooling corpse not ten feet from them. No one in the music room, the art room, the second classroom. 

No Alya. 

"There's still one person left," Val said, touching my arm as though trying to reassure me. "At the far end. And more pissed off than frightened. I'll bet you anything that that's her." 

The last two classrooms were the ones I'd taken the roof off of. The part of the roof I'd actually destroyed had been straight-out vapourized, but the raw edges left behind were shedding little chunks of busted junk into the rooms through the open ceilings. They were going to have to get some tarps or something over the gap before any rain came along if they wanted to be able to salvage the stuff still inside the rooms. 

"Alya," I called, then louder. "Alya! You here, brat?" 

Something moved over by the teacher's desk. The chair behind it was upended with a crash, and a figure crawled out from underneath. 

She had a smear of plaster dust down the side of her face and a splatter of blood across the front of her shirt, and from her expression she was—as Val had said—pissed off, but Alya looked like she was all in one piece. 

"I'm here— _Lord Gaav_ ," she said, emphasizing name and title. 

_Shit._


	13. Travails of the Next Generation

"I should have blown up my phone earlier," I grumbled. "How much did you hear?" 

"Well, my ears were ringing for a while after the roof went, but I think pretty much everything. Even if I only understood the bits that were in Universal. And a lot of those I'm not sure I _understood_ -understood, but what I got was bad enough. _Former Dark Lord?_ _Brother?_ What the _fuck_ is all that _shit_ , and how long have you been lying to me about it?!" 

Val snorted softly. "She's got your manners, that's for sure." 

"Shut up, Uncle Val! I'm talking to Dad!" 

I looked at Alya for a long moment, but if I had thoughts of staring her down, I had to abandon them almost immediately, because she glared back at me and jerked her chin up the way she did when she figured that abandoning the position she'd staked out would just make things worse. 

"You found out most of it at the same time I did," I said. "Val had fed me a few dribbles of information before that, but without many specifics. I knew I was part Mazoku, but not about the Dark Lord shit until Sherra spilled the beans." Although in retrospect I should have guessed: if Val was on the same power level as Xellos, Xellos had served a Dark Lord directly, and Val served _me_ directly . . . I would have picked up on it if I'd taken the time to think it through, but I hadn't thought it mattered. "And if that asshole Dynast ever was anything like my brother, I'm disowning him." 

"And the bit about going through Uncle Val to get at him?" 

I rolled my eyes. "I was lying. Dynast had a knife against Val's throat, and I wanted to throw him off-balance so Val could get loose. It worked." In fact, we couldn't have coordinated it better if we'd had a week to plan and practice. "End of story." 

Alya was still frowning, but her "pissed off" seemed to have died down to a mere "suspicious". "So . . . being a Mazoku and a Dark Lord means you're evil, right?" 

I shrugged. "I used to be, I guess. I still only remember little bits and pieces." 

"Oh . . ." 

I may be dense, but I thought I'd finally figured out what was wrong. "This doesn't change anything between you and me, brat. And it won't." I paused, hoping that would sink in. "We'll talk more later. For now we need to get out of here before the rest of the roof falls in." A chunk of tile chose that moment to aim itself at my head, and I batted it away, towards the back of the room. Alya giggled, although it sounded a bit strained. 

Val confirmed that there was no one else left in the building, and we headed downstairs, then outside, which turned out to be something of a circus—I mean, there were a couple of hundred kids, and a couple of ambulances with paramedics, and three or four staff from the school who had somehow escaped, and Mazenda had called up the evening and night shifts to help keep order, _and_ some worried parents were starting to show up too. 

It was Seigram, normally in charge of the night shift, who noticed us first and came jogging across the parking lot. 

"How bad?" I asked him flatly. 

I couldn't see his frown through the mask, but long familiarity had taught me what it meant when he shifted his weight that way. "It could have been worse, actually. Most of the children don't need more than disinfectant and band-aids. The teachers and other staff weren't so lucky, though. Five adult survivors, including the teacher with the missing leg that Mr. Val brought out. Eight dead, plus about a dozen children. The number of severely injured survivors is small, but the wounds were . . . targeted." 

"Meaning?" I had a feeling that I already knew, but I wanted him to spell it out. 

"A talented baseball player who now has only one leg. A budding guitarist with a shattered hand and arm. A gifted painter, blinded. A girl known for her beauty who no longer has a nose." 

Alya looked stricken. She could probably fit names and faces to all of those thumbnail descriptions. 

"Pain and despair," Val said. "They probably threw a lot of threats around, and carried them out only on the ones who reacted most strongly. Torturing innocents . . . like smashing eggs in front of their parents . . ." His heavy canines flashed as he snarled at nothing. "Have the kids been taken to the hospital yet? I'm not good enough with white magic to regrow severed body parts, but I might be able to help some of them." 

It took me a moment to remember that I was the only one who could understand what Val was saying right now, and pass the question on to Seigram, who nodded. 

Val grimaced. I was torn—my job required me to sort things out here, but a fragment of memory surfaced telling me that, as a Mazoku hybrid, casting multiple strong healing spells was going to be hard on him. Unfortunately, my memory didn't also produce a handy method of being in two places at once, which pissed me off. If I had to stay and couldn't let him go alone . . . he'd stay if I told him to, but that would probably piss _him_ off . . . 

My eyes fell on Alya. Well, that might work. "Hey, brat." 

"What now?" She didn't even look at me. 

"I need you to go to the hospital with Val, and take care of talking to people for him—without me there, he isn't going to be able to understand anyone. And make sure he rests for at least ten minutes between healing spells, even if you have to sit on him. I've got to stay here." 

Well, that got me two thoughtful looks, anyway. Val sighed and smiled ruefully. 

"I did promise you that I'd protect her. I'll grit my teeth and do my best to bear it, if that's your will." 

"It is." _Little dragon . . . don't you get it? I'm worried about you as much as I am about her. More, maybe. Normally you read me so well . . . or does your pride depend on not getting it this time?_

"Fine, then." Val reached up and pulled me down for a quick kiss while Alya made gagging sounds in the background. "We'll see you in a couple of hours." 

It was the first time since we'd become lovers—become lovers again?—that I'd been separated from him for longer than it took to take a shower. Seeing him disappear with Alya sent a cold, prickling feeling running down my spine. I told myself that they weren't in danger, that— 

— _just gives me that thin little smile of his. Dynast's always been all lies and masks. Worse than Phibby, even. At least the girls have something genuine in them, if you dig deep enough to find it, but Baby Brother's like a set of nesting boxes, where you open one after the other only to find more fucking air inside the last one. No personality and he isn't good at anything in particular that I've ever been able to see. I'm still trying to figure out why Ruby-Eye even bothered to make him. The best I've come up with so far is that he had leftover parts when he was done building the girls._ — 

"Fuck," I whispered, raising my hand to my head. It was a damned good thing I hadn't gotten hit with one of those flashbacks during the fight on the roof. The Dynast in my memory hadn't looked at all like the man I'd seen today—for one thing, his hair had been that really pale blonde that looks white in certain lights—but his expression had matched exactly. And a trace of memory suggested that his appearance had never been stable for all that long anyway. 

How much longer was it going to take before all these scraps linked up into something that fucking well made sense? I wished they would either do that or go away. Having my current life bulldozed under would be better than this on-again, off-again shit. 

I didn't have time to brood about it, though. I had to get the fucking circus in front of me organized. Seigram had at least gotten a list of the people who had gotten sent off to the hospital by ambulance, but crowd control wasn't his strongest skill. I spent some time yelling at people, and beating on one or two of the more belligerent or hysterical parents—not too hard, though, just enough to get them to back off a bit. As luck had it, the school secretary was one of the survivors, and I had Kanzel escort her back into the building to get class records and an employee list so that we could do some kind of roll call. 

We might have found all of the living, but I wanted to be sure we had all of the bodies, too. So that we could at least tell people that their kid wasn't going to be coming home tonight. I mean, if it had been Alya, I knew I would have wanted to _know_ , not wonder. 

It took more than an hour to get everything sorted out, to reunite the parents who were there with their kids and find somewhere to stash the ones that didn't have a convenient parent or live nearby and would need to be bussed home—thankfully there weren't all that many of them. The two healthy surviving teachers stayed with them to keep some kind of order. I had Kanzel drive the secretary and the janitor home, since neither of them was in any condition to drive themselves. 

Once that was over, we were able to tackle the job of getting the bodies out. We laid them out on the playing field next to the parking lot in three gory rows of six with one last adult corpse laid crossways above the head of the last row. Cause of death was pretty fucking obvious in most cases—it's hard to mistake a hole blown through some poor bastard's torso, or a torn-off limb that had to have bled out in seconds, or a decapitation. I'd had to hunt down a missing severed head and bring it back myself, because no one else had the stomach. 

The coroner's office would have to hold them, of course, but I already had enough good eyewitness accounts, plus photos and a couple of minutes of video from some of the kids' cells, that I wasn't going to have to commit to more than a superficial investigation. I'd even report my fucking encounter with Dynast and Sherra, although I was going to have to thoroughly cook both the events and the dialogue to avoid the I-am-a-Dark-Lord bits. I didn't want that to get out yet. Not while I was still trying to give Alya something resembling a normal life here. 

Then I dumped the problem of contacting the school board on Seigram—poor bastard was going to be sleepwalking through his shift tonight, but of all the officers working for me, he and Kanzel were the ones I trusted most. After that I caught a ride with one of the ambulances that was returning empty to the hospital. 

Val and Alya were sitting in the waiting room. She was playing a game on her cell. He was just leaning back in a plastic chair with his eyes closed. They snapped open as soon as I set foot inside the room, though. 

"You okay?" I asked. 

He nodded. "Tired, though. It's funny—I can spin off raw power or shamanist spells for _hours_ , but try a half-dozen healing spells and I'm ready to keel over. I don't even want to think about what casting a holy spell would be like." 

"He fixed Brian's arm," Alya said. "And Yuara's eyes. And stuck Morl's leg back on so well that the doctors couldn't tell where it had been cut off. He couldn't help Jani, though—they didn't find her nose. So she's going to need surgery to rebuild it, but the doctors say she should look almost like before when they're done." A pause, then, firmly, "I really want to learn this magic stuff." 

I looked at Val, who shrugged. "I did say I'd give it a shot if she really wants. There's no harm in teaching her stuff like Lighting and Levitation—even Wind Brid—and they might just save her life someday. But I don't think I'm up to it today." 

"Tomorrow, maybe? If magic lessons are enough to convince you to come to the office with us, brat," I added in passing. "I doubt you're going to have school for a couple of days—they need to find classroom space and teachers to replace the ones that aren't coming back." And I didn't want her at home alone. For that matter, I was going to abuse my authority to have Val set wards up around her temporary school, wherever it turned out to be. Too many Mazoku knew that she was connected to me. 

I was sure, now, that whatever was going on _was_ about me, even if I hadn't wanted to believe it. _Renegade Dark Lord._ They had to have been keeping an eye on me at least since I'd moved to East Sairaag County, and probably for years before that. Monitoring me to make sure I didn't get my power back, or reunite with Val. Then, when it had happened, they'd moved just a hair too slowly. Why, I wasn't sure, though. I wanted to talk to Val and see what he thought, but not with Alya listening in on even just my half of the conversation. 

"We've got a few more hours to put in before—" I stopped in mid-sentence as I realized I'd forgotten about something. "Oh, fuck." 

"What?" Two different voices, two different languages, overlapping. 

"Wizer Freion. He's probably still sitting in my office holding that fucking warrant he tried to serve on Val. Like I fucking well need to deal with him on top of everything else. I wonder if I could convince Dynast the bastard was my best friend in the world . . ." 

Val chuckled. "I doubt it—too bad, though. Let's leave him hanging for a while longer and go have lunch. I'm starving." 

We ended up at a cafe midway between the hospital and the office, one that claimed to serve "authentic Taforashian cuisine". I couldn't tell the difference between that and typical Lyzeillan food, but whatever. 

"Dad," Alya said suddenly as she pushed a forlorn pickle around her plate while waiting for Val to finish his third sandwich, "does this Wizer Freion guy seem to you like he has kids?" 

I raised my eyebrows. "Huh. I never thought about it, but my guess is no." 

"Then I've got an idea of how to get him off your case." She grinned a grin that looked an awful lot like Val's smirk . . . or mine, I guess. 

Wizer Freion was indeed still waiting for us when we got back to the office after more than five hours. 

"Where's your faithful follower?" I asked as I sat down at my desk, noting Emil's absence . . . and the empty carton of take-out balanced on a stack of print-outs. "And throw away your fucking garbage." Val took his usual position at my shoulder, and Alya curled up in the unoccupied "guest" chair and took her phone out. 

"He went back to our hotel, claiming he had a headache," Wizer said, escorting the take-out carton to the garbage can. 

I snorted. "Sounds like he had an attack of conscience. I'm not surprised. He's a pathetic little cream puff that shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a fucking cynical old buzzard like you. Now, I think we were swapping threats when we left off. Want to start from there again?" 

"Threats? Oh, no, no, no such thing. At least on my part. This is a perfectly legitimate warrant." And he laid it on the desk between us. 

I picked it up and took my time reading. There were three or four technicalities I could have tried to torpedo it on, the biggest one being whether or not a judge from another province of Lyzeille entirely could authorize Val's arrest. I could also just have flat-out refused to let Wizer serve the thing—since this was my district, I had the final say up to a point—but that would only have gained Val a few weeks or months while Wizer and I argued about it in front of a magistrate. 

If I had to, I'd go that route . . . but I had to admit that Alya's idea was better, since it might leave me on speaking terms with Wizer afterwards. 

As though on cue, my daughter spoke up. "Dad? What's that paper?" 

"It's a warrant for Val's arrest," I said. It was an effort to keep my face straight. 

"Arrest? You mean they want to put him in jail?" 

"Agent Wizer does." 

Alya blinked wide, teary eyes. "But . . . but _why_? Uncle Val hasn't done anything wrong! He _helps_ people! Without him, Yuara would be blind and they would have had to cut Brian's arm off and—" 

"Calm down, kiddo. Wizer here thinks that Val got into Lyzeille without permission, and he wants to have him sent back to . . . where _would_ you deport him to, anyway, Wizer? I'm pretty sure he's stateless, for all intents and purposes." 

Wizer coughed. "Well, we intended to figure that out after we . . . interned him for a while . . ." 

"When Dad talks about 'interning' someone, he means the same thing as sending them to jail," Alya said. "You do want Uncle Val in jail! You do! You're horrible!" 

I didn't want to know how she'd managed to get those tears streaming down her face at just the perfect moment, but I was biting the inside of my cheek to keep from ruining it. Wizer looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here right now, proving that Alya had been right at the restaurant. 

"Men who haven't ever been around kids much have a hard time dealing with crying fits and temper tantrums," she'd said. "And I doubt he'll be able to tell if I'm acting younger than I really am. _And_ if worst comes to worst, I'm still a minor, so there isn't much he can do to me if I just rip up that warrant of his while I'm freaking out, right?" 

I acted surprised when she plucked it out of my hand. 

"You're evil!" she screamed at Wizer. "You're evil and this piece of paper is evil and I'm not letting you hurt Uncle Val with it!" 

Wizer grabbed for the warrant, but Alya was quicker and scooted her chair back, hunching over the sheet of paper. The PBI agent slumped down in his seat as the ripping sounds started. 

Alya finished her act by theatrically throwing all the little bits of paper up in the air, and sniffling. "Now you can't do anything with it anymore! Dad, have you got ( _sniff_ ) any Kleenex?" 

"Ask Mazenda," I told her. 

"'Kay." And she sniffled her way through the door and into the outer office. 

Wizer gave me a sour look. "It's surprising that this district doesn't have a lot more crime, if that's your idea of maintaining discipline." 

"She's just a kid," I said with a shrug. "I'll have a talk with her later, when she isn't so worked up. I won't get through to her if I try now." Then I let myself grin. "I have to admit, though, that she couldn't have done a better job on that warrant of yours if I'd asked her to. Makes it a little tough to do more than scold her a bit." 

Wizer scowled, but he didn't say anything. I considered that an improvement. Behind me, Val chuckled. 

"Now, are you going to tell us what you really want, without the shitty tactics?" I asked. "Or you can get the fuck out of my county. I don't really care which." 

Wizer remained frozen. 

"You know," Val said, "the fact that you're so quiet about whatever this is makes me think you really don't want us to hear about it for some reason. Maybe _you're_ the one who's been leaving dismembered corpses with bowls of blood beside them lying around. If I wanted to avoid being suspected, becoming the lead investigator on the case would be the perfect way to go." I didn't have to turn and look at him to be able to tell he was smirking. 

"I thought your theory was that Mazoku had done it," Wizer said, but he'd turned slightly grey-green. 

"A mid-level Mazoku can impersonate a human perfectly for indefinite periods if he or she wants to. For all we know, the real Wizer Freion may have been dead for the last six months and the body hidden in the foundations of a warehouse in central Dils or something." Val still sounded amused. 

"Or maybe you are the real Wizer Freion, but you think it's a good idea to continue your original investigation even though you now know there are Mazoku involved, and want us to run interference for you," I suggested. "Although that would take more balls than brains, and you don't look like you've got that much between your legs." 

"I'll have you know that many ladies of my acquaintance have found my endowments quite satisfac—" Wizer stopped in mid-sentence and ground his teeth. "I am not letting you drag me down to your level!" 

My turn to smirk now. "If you've been sleeping around enough in the last couple of years to get multiple evaluations, you're already on a level below mine. I'm strictly a one-dragon man these days." 

My hands were resting on the desk, where they had been since the beginning of all this. Val reached down and interlaced the fingers of his left hand with those of my right. 

Wizer blinked as he watched this. Then he sighed and said, "I think that's enough discussion for one day. If you'll excuse me . . ." He pushed his chair back and got up. As he passed through the doorway to the outer office, I heard him mutter something else, with the word "retire" in it. 

I waited until the outside doorway opened and shut before I looked up at Val. "What do you think?" I asked. 

Val snorted. "Well, judging from his emotional reactions, your guess about his motivations was the right one. Idiot. It would be nice to believe we'd gotten rid of him for good, but I doubt we'll be so lucky." 

"I'm tempted to assassinate him, but it would cause problems if we were caught," I admitted with a grimace. "I guess that leaves prayer." 

"Except that there's no one either of us could pray to that would listen. The Lord of Nightmares doesn't grant prayers, I turned my back on Ceiphied and the Dragon Gods after my clan died, you were never on speaking terms with them to begin with, and the other Dark Lords consider you a traitor and me, scum. I suppose I could pray to _you_ , but I don't think that would help much," Val added. "We could sic Alya on him again the next time he shows up, though." 

"Next time, I start charging, though," my daughter said, poking her head into the office and joining us in grinning nastily at an invisible Wizer Freion.


	14. Reflections of Trickery

"So," I said to Val as he sat, shirtless, on the edge of our bed—officially _our_ bed now, since we'd just finished moving his few belongings into the room. 

"You want to talk business _now_?" 

"You know we'll both fall asleep afterwards," I retorted. "Horny little dragon. Besides, who's in charge here?" 

"You are, Lord Gaav." A pause. "Sorry. Conditioned response. At least sit down." 

I dumped my shirt first, so that I could enjoy the warmth of skin against skin when I put my arm around his shoulders. He reciprocated by sliding his around my waist and snuggling against me. 

"I'd rather just fuck too," I said, "but there are a couple of things that don't make sense, and I'd prefer that Alya not hear us talking about them." 

"Mmh. So what doesn't make sense?" 

"Timing, mostly. Obviously, all this Mazoku shit has something to do with me, or it wouldn't be happening around East Sairaag County and right now. I figure Dynast doesn't want another Dark Lord around—too much competition—so he's been making a point of keeping me from remembering what I am or accessing my powers, probably for the past several hundred years. My guess is that the only reason he doesn't kill me immediately whenever I . . . reincarnate . . . is that it takes him a while to find me again afterwards, so he thinks that, so long as I don't show any signs of remembering, leaving me alive is a smaller risk than leaving me unmonitored. The question is, what changed a week ago that made the Mazoku masquerading as Old Man Axel _phone my fucking office_ to tell me where you were?" 

Val's fingers tapped a pattern against my side. "It seems like total nonsense to me too . . . but 'nonsense' at a time like this immediately makes me think 'Xellos'. And we know he's involved. For all I know, he could have _been_ the old man, since I never did meet him." 

I thought about that for a moment. "So . . . Xellos either threatens 'Axel' into doing what he wants, or simply impersonates the old man himself for an hour or so while 'Axel' is elsewhere, and uses that time to phone me. Then, when 'Axel' finds you're missing, he decides to get the hell out before anyone else notices and turns him into a fine smear of . . . whatever dead Mazoku turn into. That implies Xellos wants me—wants _Lord Gaav_ —alive and awake. So what does he want from me that he can't pull off himself? Dynast's death?" 

"Maybe. He hates Dynast's guts just a hair more than he hates ours, I think. And he was the one who set us up to take Zelas out." 

I blinked. "He did?" 

"Yeah. I'm still surprised that he did it. Knowing that she'd gone as dangerously crazy as Hellmaster was one thing, but breaking loose from the hierarchy and getting rid of her was another. Especially for a pure Mazoku." 

"Hmph. So . . . Xellos starts the ball rolling, then drops in a few days later to see how I'm making out. I play along and sling some bullshit around, and he figures I'm completely recovered, so he stops trying to hold Dynast back. Dynast finds out I've got some connection to a student at East Sairaag Middle School, so he attacks the school, but either we get there too quickly for him to find Alya or Xellos didn't give him enough identifying information." 

"And you don't want Alya to know her friends and teachers are dead because of you," Val finished. "Which is why you waited until I'd slapped soundproofing seals on everything." 

I nodded. "So now, we need to figure out what's next. I don't like dancing to Xellos' tune." 

"Neither do I," Val said. "But at the same time, there's no way for us to find them—they're probably based out of some pocket in the Astral." 

"They're not going to stay there, though. We need a trap for when they do show up. Except that I'm the only one who can take Dynast. Shit." I scowled at the dresser on the other side of the room. "We're going to have to come up with some way of making them think I'm somewhere I'm not. That's the least risky." 

"We-ell, you could just saturate the entire area with your power. This town only covers about four square miles, doesn't it? You should be able to throw a low-level ward over the whole thing. That would make it nearly impossible for anyone to tell where you were inside that area." 

"Four square miles." I could still feel the power moving under my skin, but . . . 

"I've seen you _blow up_ larger areas. In one shot. Dark Lord, remember? Co-equal with the Dragon Gods?" 

"It's just a bit much to stretch my mind around. Fuck, most of the time it doesn't even seem real." And it didn't. I'd pinched myself twice already since we'd left the school, trying to wake myself up. 

"When your memory finally comes back . . ." 

"Will it, though? Ever?" 

Val straightened up a bit, and turned his head so that he was looking straight at me. I looked back at him. There were several moments of silence. 

" . . . It's the girl, isn't it? Alya. You're holding yourself back because of her. Not consciously, maybe, but . . ." He sighed. "And if that's the way you want it, deep down, then I'm not going to fight you." 

_Shit._ He was right. I was afraid of losing hold of my memories of Alya, of the meagre life I'd built with her at the center of it. She was just . . . so fucking important . . . and yet the look in Val's eyes . . . he was hurting so much because of this . . . the only two people in the world who really mattered to me, and I couldn't seem to find a way to keep them both happy. 

"I suck at this melodrama stuff," I grumbled. "I just . . . there has to be a better way, but this just doesn't . . . I don't want to . . ." 

"I know. It's easier to face down an army than sort your feelings into something that makes sense, isn't it?" Val smirked. It only looked a little bit forced. "Anyway, now that we know what the next step is, why don't we drop this stupid conversation and move on to what I _thought_ we were coming in here for?" 

"Let me get my pants off first. I don't need to fry any more clothes. Especially when I'm not even sure why the fuck it happens." I unbuckled my belt, preparing to strip the rest of the way. 

"Because your clothes aren't warded, and we both discharge small amounts of magical energy whenever we come. It's like some people scream random crap or dig their nails into the other person's back." Val kicked his trousers off. They flew across the room and scored a bull's eye on the hamper. 

I didn't bother, just leaving everything where it landed. "I've heard you scream random crap in the middle of sex too. At least a couple of times. And I didn't know you could blush like that," I added with a chuckle, good humour mostly restored. 

"I didn't either," Val muttered, scrubbing his left hand across his face like he was trying to wipe away the delicate shade of pink. "And what I scream isn't random. Usually." 

"Sure it isn't." 

His smirk was real this time. "Fine, then. I'll scream someone _else's_ name and see how you like it. Oh, _Wizer!_ " 

"So you want to be just another one of that asshole's conquests?" 

Val shook his head and said seriously. "No, I've only ever wanted you. No one else. I chose you. _You're_ my mate." 

"I'm still not sure what that means." I sat back down beside him on the bed and stole a quick kiss. "I mean, is it something like a human marriage, or . . . ?" 

"That's close. If my people had lived . . . I would have been required to father three or four eggs with different females, to prevent inbreeding—there were never more than a few hundred of us—but my mate would have been the person I chose to share my life with when I wasn't being used as a breeding machine. If I'd chosen a female, then I would have helped to raise her hatchlings . . . so I guess in some ways, this isn't that different. But no ceremonies or other formalities, just a private agreement. For my clan, anyway. The goldens always stacked a lot of stupid shit with oaths and altars on top." 

When I cupped the side of his face with my hand, he leaned into it. "If I asked you to marry me," I asked slowly, "would you?" 

His eyebrows rose, but he said, "Of course." Without even a split second of hesitation. "If you feel we need the legal relationship," he added. 

"Well, it should short-circuit half of Wizer's bullshit." And it would automatically make him Alya's legal guardian, although I hoped we would never be in a position where that mattered. 

"Mmm. Yeah, that might be nice. I'm getting kind of tired of Wizer. But you know what would be even nicer?" 

"What?" 

"You not thinking about the future, or the past, or anything but right here and right now." Val pulled away, kissed my palm quickly in apology, then leaned in to nibble at my neck. 

"I'm sure you have some ideas on how to focus my attention where you want it, don't you? Greedy dragon." 

"Hundreds," Val murmured in between kisses and licks and nips. "Hundreds—and hundreds—and hundreds . . ." 

He rested one hand on my shoulder and tangled the other in my hair as he worked his way down my chest. I had my hands on him too, stroking the sensitive places on his back where the wings lay hidden underneath the skin. He sucked my left nipple into his mouth and bit down on it. The little flare of pain brought a warning growl from my throat, and then I felt . . . fuck, it's difficult to describe it. Like something was touching me, stroking me in a sensitive place that I didn't have. It felt good, though. Very good. 

I jerked. I couldn't help it. And Val looked up with a smirk. 

"You felt that, didn't you." 

"What do you think you're doing this time?" The question came out thick and growly. My cock was hard and full and pointing straight at Val. 

"Touching you," Val said, and planted another kiss at the base of my sternum. "On the physical and on the astral. You have a gorgeous set of wings, you know. It's too bad you can't take your dragon form on the physical anymore, because you are magnificent. But this is the best I can do." And there was that odd sensation again, touch on skin that wasn't there, which gradually merged into the feeling of him touching my shoulder. Except that he wasn't. 

The touch came again, stroking along my . . . wing . . . and I felt myself move something else that wasn't there, coiling and twining and . . . Val's smirk was widening and I could taste scales as well as skin as I turned my head at an awkward angle to kiss his wrist. 

"You just curled your tail around mine," he reported. "Damn, that feels good. Mmm." Warm breath against my skin. "Lord Gaav, do you mind if I . . . ?" He seemed to lose track of the rest of the question in a moment of slit-eyed ecstasy, but I answered it anyway. 

"Do whatever you want. You seem to have been getting it all right so fa—" I sucked in a breath as he wrapped one hand, then the other, around my very hard cock, and began to bend down. 

I'd never heard the sound I made as he slipped his lips over the tip of my erection before—a low cry, not a growl, that was somehow like the belling sound he sometimes made not long before he came. Fuck, it felt _so_ good, as good as the tight heat of his body, with his tongue pushing into the slit and . . . _oh, fuck . . ._ I dug my fingers into the mattress. 

"Val," I said, almost choking on the name. "Val, I'm gonna—" 

He just slid me further into his mouth—the tip of my cock can't have been more than a hair from the back of his throat—and worked his tongue, and that was all that it took. The soundproofing spell was just enough to keep the walls of the room from shaking as I roared and came, hard, down his throat. He swallowed thirstily, sucking on me, drinking me dry. 

He didn't back off until I was completely soft . . . and when he did, he slowly licked his lips. 

"Delicious," he purred. 

I told myself that the warmth spreading across my face was not due to a blush. Not at all. I don't fucking blush. 

"Turning gourmet now?" I forced out, and he laughed. "Damned dragon," I added fondly. "Come up here. I want to touch you." 

"Of course, Lord Gaav." 

I laid back, expecting him to lie down beside me. Instead, he crawled up on top of me. Not that I minded. I was capable of supporting a lot more weight than just one lean-bodied dragon, and I liked feeling the warm, firm surfaces of his body along the whole length of mine. And I could feel his cock, hard and weeping, caught between the two of us. 

I put one hand on the back of his neck and the other on his ass and kissed him, long and hard. It was weird, tasting myself there, but it was also . . . symbolic, I guess. Somehow. 

Running my fingers up and down the crack in his ass had him making hungry little noises. He'd emptied me out good, but that didn't keep me from using my hands on him—I just needed some lube . . . 

Power pulsed under my skin, and my fingers were suddenly coated in something warm and slick. I barely held back a snort, because if I'd needed any more proof that Val and I had been together a fucking long time, that would have provided it. I mean, magic insta-lube, for fuck's sake. I wouldn't have needed that if I'd usually been with a woman. 

I didn't waste any time in slipping the first finger inside him, making him groan. "L-lord Gaav . . . I don't think it's going to take much . . ." 

"No?" I punctuated that with a nip at his jaw. 

Val produced a crazed-sounding laugh. "I almost came while I was sucking you. Oh, _fuck_ , more . . ." 

"More what?" I teased. 

"Want you deeper—stretching me wider—" 

I slipped in another finger, and nearly had my ears blasted out by that belling cry of his. I didn't mind, though. I loved the way he responded when I touched him, the way he was completely into what we were doing, and the warm, _powerful_ feeling it gave me, knowing that I was the only one who could make him react this way. 

" _Mine._ " The word slipped past my lips, not loud, but intense. 

"Always," came the throaty response. "Could have had—anything in the world—but I didn't want—anything but you—Lord Gaav." 

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I gave him one more finger instead, and he screamed and arched and splattered both our stomachs with warm, sticky fluid. 

I expected him to get off me afterwards, at least once I pulled my fingers out, but instead he sighed and snuggled closer, if that was possible, pillowing his head on my shoulder. We were probably going to stick together if we stayed like that too long, but it was kind of difficult for me to give a fuck. 

_Out of everything in the world, you chose me._ I wasn't sure I believed it. How could he have— 

— _not anything to write home about, if I'd had a home to write_ to _, but at least the beer's decent. I take another pull at my mug and frown down at the table. Where the fuck am I supposed to go after this? North, maybe. I haven't been there in a while._

_I know I need to find something better to do with myself than wander around aimlessly, but since I, against all odds, survived Phibby's attack and got myself tumbled into another incarnation by the fucking curse that's had its teeth in my ass for more than a thousand years now, fighting against the others seems . . . petty. Or at least boring. And unnecessary for now. So long as I keep a low profile, they aren't likely to bother me, or even notice that I'm around unless I run into one of their high-level minions by accident. I figure that might happen in another thousand years or so, given just how few higher Mazoku are left._

_I have no servants left at all. Even my crazy, beautiful little dragon vanished at some point between my death and my rebirth, the tie between us snapped. I keep trying to tell myself he's no more important than any of the others, but I never believe me, and part of my mind keeps probing at the space where my link to him should be._

_Someone drops into the chair across from me. In better days, I might have found that level of gall amusing for the ten seconds before I killed them. Right now, it just pisses me off._

_"This is my table, asshole," I growl without looking up. "Get the fuck out of my face right now, or there won't be enough left of you to fill one of these mugs."_

_"Given the amount of flying I had to do to catch up with you, there might not be much more than that left already."_

_The voice sends a shock zapping through me. Familiar, so achingly familiar, right down the slightly wry tone he always uses on the rare occasions he says something that could be considered a joke._

Val? _I still can't feel him . . . but . . ._

_I look up from the table. See golden eyes and the hint of a sweet, tired smile. His horn's gone, and the scarlike marks that used to slash scross his cheeks . . . the actual scars too, including the L-shaped one in the middle of his forehead. He looks like he did in the desert that night, minus the bleeding wounds. I don't sense the least hint of Mazoku power in him, either. His emotions are a complex hodge-podge, relief-affection-irritation-lust-longing . . . and mine are even worse. I can feel the smile forcing its way onto my lips, irrepressible._

_"You're alive," I say. Inane, but I don't fucking care._

_"And so are you. I thought I'd lost you for good." Val's expression sharpens, mouth turning downward, eyes burning with anger. "You fucking idiot."_

_"That's still 'my lord fucking idiot' to you," I tell him, and he snorts. "Reckless little dragon. Be glad there's no one watching us who gives a shit about Mazoku pecking order. Where the hell have you been?"_

_"Purgatory," Val growls. "I'll tell you the whole story later. The short version is, someone turned me back into an egg and dumped me in the lap of the last survivor of Vrabazard's golden dragon votary clan. She decided she was going to give me 'a second chance' and tried to bring me up as her son, so that she could 'atone'. Asking me whether I_ wanted _to be her redemption never crossed what passes for her mind. I was always intending to get out of there as quickly as I could, and when the spell of your name started working again, I cut out so fast she's probably still staring at the afterimage."_

_I raise my eyebrows. "You didn't kill her?"_

_He looks down and away. "The stupid little fool's barely a hundred and fifty years old," he said. "Younger than I was when you met me. Hell, she's barely more than an egg herself. And I needed someone to leave Gravos and Jillas with. Murdering her in cold blood would have been a waste of resources."_

_"Your choice," I say with a shrug. "So long as she doesn't come looking for you."_

_And there, finally, is that cheeky smirk of his. "I left a note saying that I'd gone off with Xellos. By the time she figures out it's a lie, the trail will have been cold for months, if not years. Besides, after you turn me back into a Mazoku, she won't want me even if she does find me."_

_"You're sure that's what you want." Has he forgotten what he went through the first time?_

_"The idea makes me downright orgasmic. I never,_ ever _want to waste five years combing the world for you again. I want things to go back to the way they were. Lord Gaav."_

_Longing always tastes like buttermilk to me, thin and sour. Val's has a cinnamon-sugar sprinkle of fear on top, though._

_"Fine," I say. "Just let me finish this one fucking beer. It's the first decent one I've had in nearly a month."_

_Val laughs—as much because of the release of tension as anything, I guess. But I like the sound of it._ — 

That, I reflected as I snapped out of it again and realized that Val had fallen asleep on top of me, was the longest one yet. And with the most complex and detailed set of emotional flavours. Fuck, that felt weird, and yet . . . not. A Mazoku ability that I hadn't gotten back yet. But I bet it would come soon. Or was I subconsciously blocking it along with the rest of my memory? 

_This identity shit is driving me nuts._


	15. No Love Lost

Alya took a deep breath, frowning in concentration. "Light which burns beyond crimson flame, let your power gather here in my hand! _Lighting!_ " 

A glowing white sphere about the size of a softball flickered into being, floating above her cupped right hand. 

"It looks like you've got a knack for this," Val said. "Lighting's an easy spell, sure, but most people need at least three or four tries to get it right." 

"Really?" 

"It took me three, the first time I learned it." 

"Then I might be better at magic than you are?" 

"Sort of. A human's raw magical capacity is less than a dragon's or a Mazoku's, but I'm a really sloppy caster. So there are things I can do with my magic that you'll never be able to do with yours, but anything you _can_ do, you'll probably be better at than me if you work at it." 

"Huh." Alya stared at the ball of light that was still hovering above her hand. "How long does this thing last, anyway?" 

Val shrugged. "At that brightness? A couple of hours. Longer if it's dimmer, or you can turn it up really bright and blind everyone in the room for a couple of seconds. Don't try that in here. You can move it around, too—either float it around, or grab it and throw it. You're the only one who can touch it, though. Anyone else's hand will go straight through." He demonstrated by swatting at it. 

"Cool," Alya said. She stared intensely at the globe, and it slowly floated further up until it was above her head. "Will you teach me another one?" 

"In a couple of days—I want you to practice this one first and make sure you've got it down. I figure we'll go with Levitation next, and then Grey Buster, or maybe one of the healing spells." 

I shook my head. Who would ever have expected when I found Val in that hole in the ground that he'd slide so neatly into the role of parent? But he'd kept Alya not-frustrated for most of a day already, even though being cooped up in my makeshift office was probably the last thing my daughter wanted. At least she hadn't tried too hard to argue us into leaving her at home alone. I guess seeing her teacher die had made her understand just how serious things were starting to get. 

School would be starting up again next week for her—the school board was reopening Greywords Elementary, which had been mothballed a couple of years ago when the number of students had dropped off. There had been caretakers keeping an eye on the building, and a daycare had been leasing part of it, but they had to make sure there was enough toilet paper and replace desks meant for first-graders with something that thirteen-year-olds could use before the middle school could move in. They were also interviewing half the substitute teachers in Sairaag, trying to find enough of them who weren't too spooked by what had happened to the last batch to keep the school running. 

I was going to insist that they let Val scribble wards on the walls this weekend. Chances were that the board wouldn't argue too much. 

There was no one in the Sairaag area—possibly no one in the entire peninsula—who didn't believe in Mazoku now. 

Someone was coming up the stairs from the ground floor. Confused, echoing footsteps . . . pausing outside the door to the outer office . . . door opening . . . 

"Can I help you?" Mazenda asked, only slightly muffled by the closed inner door. 

"I hope so." 

I stiffened. That voice . . . fuck, it couldn't be . . . 

"I'm looking for my daughter." 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck!_ There was no point in trying to lie to myself about it any longer. Especially not when Alya's light-globe had just flickered out and her face had gone white. Val was on his feet, looking at the door, ready for a fight—even if he didn't recognize the voice, he'd noticed the tension in the air. 

I considered staying where I was, sitting behind my desk, but . . . no. If I was standing, I could use my massive size to intimidate, and I wasn't going to give up any advantage in the coming confrontation. 

"It's okay, brat," I said as I positioned myself beside Val, between Alya and the door. "You're not going anywhere you don't want to." 

She forced a tremulous smile. "Thanks, Dad." 

I braced myself as the door opened. It was stupid in a way. I was a fucking _Dark Lord_ , with power on the same level as the dragon gods' humming away under my skin. I could turn the entire county into a smoking crater by an act of will. And it didn't do me a fucking bit of good when it came to interpersonal relationships. Blasting Eris to ashes might simplify some matters, but it would also complicate others. Just like wringing her neck would have if I'd done it when things had first gone sour. 

She was a petite, dark-haired woman ( _about the same height as Lina Inverse,_ my twitchy memory contributed unhelpfully). At one time, she'd had a very good figure, with lush breasts and a narrow waist, but now she was starting to thicken up around the middle. The breasts were still perky enough, but she was probably wearing industrial-strength support to keep them that way. She'd used some kind of cheap hair dye, probably to cover up encroaching grey, and it didn't look quite right to my eye. Her face was still the same as I remembered, with the dark eyes and lush mouth, but when I looked more closely I could tell that the insulating layer of makeup was thicker now than it had been twelve years ago. Fucking shallow of me to be evaluating her on the basis of her looks, I knew, but she'd never had much else going for her from my point of view. Oh, she wasn't stupid, but she'd made a point of trying to use her intelligence against me. 

She was the same age now as I'd been when we'd gotten married. Or the same age as just-Gavin-Drakkon had been. I . . . wasn't sure how much of me was really him anymore. The part of me that was wondering what her emotions tasted like sure as hell wasn't. 

"Alya, darling! You're alright!" Eris cooed. _Too concerned. Overacted._ Alya seemed to think so too, and just nodded warily, staying behind Val and me, ignoring Eris's outstretched arms. 

"I would have gotten a message to you if she'd been hurt," I said. "I'm not _that_ much of an ass." 

"And yet you've taught my darling daughter to hate me." 

Alya snorted. "Mom, do you really think anyone here buys that bullshit?" 

" _Language_ , Alya!" 

"Why? Dad doesn't mind." 

"It isn't appropriate for a young lady." 

"Well, that's just fine, then, because the last thing I want to be is a fucking _lady_ ," my daughter snapped, chin up. "I'm going to do something with my life—either medicine or forensic science, I haven't decided yet. But all _ladies_ ever do is get married to some loser! Or, for the ones like you, a whole _string_ of losers, except that you never kept any of them long enough to actually _get_ married, did you? I still don't know how you tricked Dad into—" 

"That's enough, Alya," I growled. "She never tricked me. I tricked myself. I didn't _want_ to see her for what she was, back then." And I'd been more lonely than I wanted to admit, because there had been someone missing from my life, someone who was watching all of this play out through sharp golden eyes. 

"You bastard," Eris hissed. 

_Technically true,_ I reflected—or at least there was nothing popping into my head suggesting that Ruby-Eye, who as far as I could tell was my only parent, had ever been married. "And? Now that you know Alya's in one piece, what are you doing cluttering up my fucking office?" 

"Do you think I'm going to just turn around and walk out and leave her here? When her _life_ might be in danger? No one knows why those Mazoku attacked her school—they might do it again!" 

"Moving her won't be enough to keep her safe at this point," Val said, voice cold and even. "At least one of the Mazoku involved has met Alya and spoken to her, and he'll be able to find her in any unwarded space." 

Eris gave him a Look. "I don't think we've been introduced." 

I smirked. "No, you haven't. This is Val, my fiance." 

Eris sputtered. "You . . . with that . . . Carrie said something when I phoned her the day before yesterday, but I honestly couldn't believe you'd taken up with a . . . with a . . ." 

"With the only other person I've ever met who has more than a drop or two of dragon blood?" I said pointedly. 

"And because of that, you suddenly have hair longer than I'm tall? Admit it, Gavin—you've swung _that_ way for a long, long time." 

"More accurate to say that I don't give a shit. Your plumbing was never the problem—it was your _personality_ that left me cold." 

She glanced at Alya. Knowing Eris, her daughter's presence in the room was the one thing that kept her from accusing me of being impotent, or worse. 

"So, Mom, where's _Howie_?" my daughter said before Eris could get another shot in. "Did he dump you too?" 

Eris frowned. " _I_ dumped _him_ ," she corrected. "He thought I should stay in Gyria City instead of coming to help my little girl. Anywhere with Mazoku was too dangerous, he said." She looked spitting mad. "He's convinced that your father is one of them too—apparently you match a description in some Witness text or other," she added to me. "Stupidest thing I ever heard. Apparently they've got something against dolphins, too." 

I exchanged glances with Val—dolphins, as in _Deep-Sea_ Dolphin, my crazy sort-of sister? 

"I'm surprised you ever took up with him in the first place." Then I noticed the look she was giving me. "The fuck . . . Are you _still_ picking guys to date just on the basis that you know I'd hate them? Get over yourself. And now that you know Alya's okay, you can pack yourself back on the next flight to Gyria." 

Eris started to tear up. Another act—she'd always been fucking good at those. President of the drama club at her high school, she'd told me once when she was still working on getting me into bed with her. 

"You're always so—" _sniffle_ "—insensitive! Alya could have suffered psychological damage . . . and . . . and . . . if something happens, I might never see her again! And you expect me just to go away? How _could_ you?!" Tears were running down her face now and dripping off her chin. Funny, how she never seemed to sniffle except at the right moments to punctuate her speeches, and her eyes never got red or puffy, and she never needed to blow her nose. "Howard is right—you _are_ a monster!" 

"She isn't very good at insults, is she?" Val asked. "What _did_ you ever see in her?" 

I shrugged. "Fucked if I know. But if I have to throw her out of here, I'm going to enjoy every minute of it." 

Eris stared at me, pale-faced, her tears suddenly and suspiciously drying up. In the background, I heard Alya's cell ring. "Hello? Um . . . Yeah, he is. Just a sec. Dad? It's for you." 

I frowned. _What the fuck_ now _?_

Her phone was tiny in my hand—I'd always bought the biggest model I could find for myself, but Alya's had been chosen to fit her. 

"What _now_?" I said experimentally. 

"Oh, dear, you sound like your ex-wife is getting you down. Of course, given what terrible taste she clearly has—" 

"What the fuck do you want, Xellos?" I snarled. 

The purple fruitcake laughed. "Ah, I do like these telephone things! They're the first method I've ever found of talking to you that can't result in you trying to put a fist through some tender part of my physical projection . . ." 

I was going to need to think about that one. And maybe put Val on it. Astral traces through the telephone network? But for now . . . "I like them too—because they let me hang up on people who spend ten minutes spouting crap before they get to the fucking point." 

"You are never any fun at all. All right, all right. Sherra can identify the girl now. You'll need to keep her under close wraps from now on." 

My eyes narrowed. "And why bother telling me that?" 

"Now _that_ is a—" 

I hung up. Delicately, so as not to smash Alya's phone. 

"If that asshole calls again, hang up on him without bothering to find out what he wants," I told her, giving the phone back. "If he needs to talk to me, he can fucking well come and do it in person." 

Xellos, warnings, and motivations. The only _useful_ information I could pull out of our pseudo-conversation was that he wasn't, in fact, interested in accomplishing whatever Dynast wanted to accomplish, and that Dynast wasn't bright enough to give him exact orders about what he could and couldn't tell me. Baby Brother should have known to be more careful. Xellos might have been loyal to his creator, or just so frightened of her that he wasn't willing to cross her, but Zelas was dead now. 

"What the fuck are you staring at?" I asked Eris irritably. 

"I was just wondering who Xellos is," Eris said. 

"Xellos is a Mazoku," I said with a shrug. "Not one of the ones who attacked the school, but he's mixed up in this somehow. As for why he called me, who knows? He's a twisty little bastard." 

Eris frowned. "I'm more curious about how he knew _Alya's_ phone number." 

"He probably stole a stray phone from one of her friends in the confusion at the school," I said. "You know, the last flight today to Gyria City from Flagoon Memorial leaves in less than two hours . . ." 

"I'm not leaving. Not without Alya, not until I'm sure she's safe. I'm sure you've got a vacant guest room. I'll stay there." 

_Fuck._ Everyone was looking at me. Val's gaze said that I just had to give the order and he'd throw her out, Eris's was stubborn, and Alya's was . . . pleading. She was just twelve, and it made sense that she'd want her mother there while all this shit was going on, even if they usually didn't get along, but . . . _fuck_. 

My hands were itching with the urge to hit something. I grabbed the edge of the desk and squeezed it, ignoring the splintering sounds. Furniture was always so fucking flimsy, and I tended to make a mess of anything in grabbing range when I'd just decided to do something I didn't really want to do. 

"Don't show up before seven tonight," I warned Eris. "We're going to be busy. Val was using the room up to a couple of days ago, and I don't think we've cleaned it up since. And you get to change your own fucking sheets." 

"I wouldn't trust you to do it anyway. Tonight, then." 

She left without looking back, and apparently without seeing Alya's longing expression. 

"You okay, brat?" I don't do "gentle" well. Not surprising, I guess. 

She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. "Yeah, I'm fine. I thought you were going to start fighting with her again." 

I shrugged. "She rubs me the wrong way. And I'll bet I do much the same to her." 

"It would be more accurate to say that she's terrified of you," Val put in. "I'm just not sure why. I don't think she's aware of what you are—she didn't strike me as being that sensitive. Anyway, we've got some work to do now, though. Assuming you're finished with that—" He waved his hand at the pile of assorted crap on the corner of my desk. 

"I can get back to it tomorrow." I gave the stack of papers a look of loathing. Most of it was signing new copies of the stuff that had burned up—budget crap and the like. "Just a sec while I get the map out." 

The usual city map of Sairaag didn't include our county, so I'd made Mazenda hit the Internet and print something out, then tape it together. Eight sheets of paper, and I held it up to the light and squinted at the overlaps to make sure everything was positioned right. It was better than the piece of shit the tourist bureau handed out, anyway, which I knew from experience wasn't accurate or to scale. 

Val had described what we were going to do as a "simple" ward, with anchors at the four cardinal points. Problem was, simple didn't mean easy. We had to get the fucking anchors equally spaced, and we had to either leave something at the site or draw a diagram on something that was already there—and lead pencil wouldn't do this time. _And_ we had to make sure the ward covered at least the house, the office, Greywords Elementary-now-Middle-School, and as many as possible of the places Alya might visit without one of us along. That meant a lot of messing around with a ruler and a pencil, and grumbling at each other. And trying not to grumble at Alya when she pointed out the house of one of her "bestest friends" was outside the border and we'd have to adjust the fucking thing again. 

We ended up with a diamond-shape that took in the entire town, a chunk of countryside, and a bit of a bulge sticking out from the edge of Sairaag proper. North corner in the middle of a highway overpass, western one on the roof of a tiki bar just inside the city limits, southern one in the middle of a field full of wind generators, eastern one in the middle of the parking lot of a condemned motel that had been at the center of the local drug trade when I first moved here. Places no one really cared about, although not getting caught marking up the overpass was going to be a challenge. Not that anyone was going to arrest me for vandalism, but I didn't need to deal with more difficult-to-explain shit right now. 

"So we start with the tiki bar and hit the overpass last," I said, folding the map and jamming it into my pocket. "It should be starting to get dark by then. Finish up at the center, go out for supper, and get home in time to let the unwanted extras in. You coming or staying, brat?" 

"Coming," Alya said instantly. "I know you think it's going to be boring, but I _know_ staying here's going to be boring." 

"Okay, then, come here." I held out my hand to her and she grabbed onto it. I put my other arm around Val. Some instinct shifted inside me, and I folded space around us, popping us out on the roof of a two-storey building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was inevitable from the first that Eris would come on stage in this sooner or later. I just hope she isn't too far out of character. Val takes the opportunity to plumb her motivations a bit in the next chapter.


	16. Requiem for a Predicament

Another car whizzed past. 

"Shit," I muttered. 

"I don't think we're going to get a break in the traffic any time soon," Val said. Alya just shivered and retreated further into the folds of my coat. The sun had just ducked below the horizon, and it was getting cold out. 

Diddling with the traffic light up the road didn't seem to be in my power's repertoire, probably because I didn't really understand how the fucking things worked, but we needed to do something if I was going to get the fucking ward in place before weird o'clock in the morning. 

"Any ideas?" I asked. 

Val was looking around. "Hmm. Maybe. Just a sec—got to wait for the right moment . . ." 

The shed had probably been used to store farm tools or something before the government bought the field to use for highway right-of-way. Now it was just a mess of boards that was somehow hanging together until Val appeared nearby and lobbed a spell at it—looked like a focused blast of wind. And then there were dilapidated shed bits spread across the two-lane road that ducked under the highway here, with the mess in clear view of the intersection and looking like it was going to do a pretty fucking good job of mangling the tires of anyone who thought it would be a good idea to get close. Since just about all the traffic was coming from that direction, that should buy us a good fifteen minutes before the county sent any workers to clean it up. 

Val flickered back into place beside us and gave me a grin. 

"Not bad," I said. "So, if anyone does come this way . . . we split up looking for you, brat, and now you two are waiting for me to get back. Have your best sulk ready just in case, okay?" 

"Yeah, Dad." Alya grinned. "You know, this is kind of fun. Scary, but fun. I just wish it was warmer out." 

"I'll tell the next batch of Mazoku not to show up any earlier than June," I said, and Val snorted. 

I walked forward into the shadows under the overpass. For a moment, I was disoriented, couldn't see worth shit, then something went _click_ inside my head and I knew where everything was even without being able to see it. More bits and pieces coming back, and not even the most useful that had done so today. 

I pushed up off the ground and floated up against the concrete wall until I was high enough up to get my hand into some kind of opening up near the top. Fucked if I knew what it was for, but it was convenient, in its way: a smooth surface, hidden, and not likely to be disturbed. Exactly what I needed. 

Power flowed warmly under my skin. I'd created this shape three times already today—not that that should have been enough to make it easy to carve, but whatever sixth sense I was using right now had no trouble inverting and rotating things into different alignments inside my head, so I could at least look at it right side up. Not that it really mattered all that much. The design Val had given me looked like a squished bug, and while I could feel the way it pulled on my power, I wasn't sure the fucking thing really _had_ a right-side-up. It looked like something Alya might have drawn when she was three. 

But I knew I'd gotten it right when I felt it snap into place and start drawing power along with the other three. Good enough. One final stop, and then we could go eat. 

I dropped to the ground and walked back out to where Val and Alya were waiting. He'd taken off his jacket and given it to her, and she was pretty much lost in the folds of black leather . . . but at least she wasn't shaking anymore. Poor Val was a mess of goosebumps, although he wasn't shivering or complaining. I put my arm around his shoulders immediately. 

"You didn't have to do that, you know," I said, nodding at Alya. 

"She's the one with the mortal immune system. I might be a bit uncomfortable while we're out here, but I can't catch anything the way she might." 

Funny. Now that he mentioned it, I'd never been one for getting colds or any of that kind of shit either. I'd never really thought about it before. 

We'd calculated that the center of the ward would end up somewhere in the so-called town square. We'd been almost right. Actually, it was at the mouth of the alleyway between the music store and the Blue Lemon Cybercafe. I could feel the four symbols tugging gently, first the north one, then the west one, until I got into position. 

The wall of the building that housed the cafe was good, solid brick, so I slapped my hand on that and carved the final symbol there, a quarter-inch deep—enough to guarantee it would stay, but not enough to damage the integrity of the brick. Then I fed power into it. 

_Click-snap!_ The other four symbols latched onto the central one, energies shooting from one to the next, and I felt the sensation of my awareness somehow spreading out through the area . . . lots of humans popping in and out through the edges, but they weren't strong enough signals to bother me, and . . . what the _fuck_ was that? Cold. Cold and wet. Like someone had dumped an icecube down my back. Not unendurable, but I would have been a lot happier if it hadn't been there. 

"Something wrong?" Val asked. 

I shrugged. "Probably nothing. It's not like I'm used to this. I'll worry about it after we eat. Anybody want anything in particular?" 

"Takeout?" Alya suggested—getting tired, probably. 

"Whatever place you sent Mazenda to last week when we had what felt like half the town in your office for lunch was pretty good," Val added. 

"Feels like a long time ago, doesn't it?" I said. "Okay, I think we can manage that." 

They had the same cook in that night, so I ordered the meal-for-four with double red pepper meatballs, remembering how much Val had liked them. Hell, I doubted I would ever forget anything about him. My dragon. 

_Except that you have,_ whispered my hindbrain. Val . . . Alya . . . Mazoku . . . _Fuck._ I wasn't going to get this all sorted out tonight. There wasn't really any point in trying. 

"So, Sheriff, I gather that's your new . . . houseguest," said the woman behind the counter, nodding in Val's direction. 

"My fiance," I corrected. "I'm surprised it isn't already all over town." 

"Um. Well, there are some people that I don't think can believe that you . . . swing that way. I mean, Alya's mother . . ." 

I shrugged. "I'm not that picky about my partners' plumbing. Val and I get along well, and Alya likes him. Not that it's really anyone's business but ours." 

"Oh. Er . . . Your food is here. That's 24.33, please." 

If it hadn't been all over town before, it would be now, I thought, feeling . . . almost contented. If I was really lucky, all the distorted shit would have worked its way through the rumour mill by the time we had Dynast's hash settled. 

Maybe we could take a little time tomorrow to sneak into the town hall and intimidate the mayor into signing a marriage certificate for us. I didn't care about passing rings around, or what kind of vows we exchanged, and I doubted Val would either—I mean, it wasn't like fucking Ceiphied would be listening. We could just extemporize something quick. Kanzel and Mazenda would do as witnesses. 

We went outside before I folded space around us again. I wasn't sure how many people had figured out yet that I was capable of slinging even more magic around than Val could, and if no one ever found out for sure it would make Alya's life a lot easier. Just five or six years . . . then I could pull a disappearing act if I needed to. 

_Fuck, what kind of life do I even want at this point?_ I wondered as we went through a half-assed table-setting ritual. Val had to be in it, of course. I wasn't giving up my mate, my life-partner. But the small-town sheriff thing didn't really offer me much scope for my violent impulses, and I was always right on the edge of the public eye. There had to be something better than this. Something somewhere out there in the world that needed fighting. Something that a Dark Lord's power could reasonably be applied to. 

We were about halfway through the meal when the doorbell went off, and I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty. Great. 

"I'll get it," Alya said. 

"You sure, brat? You know who it probably is." 

"Yeah, and it's one of the few times I'll _ever_ get to order her around." 

I chuckled. She _would_ see that as important. "Okay. Go, then." 

"There are times she reminds me so much of you that it almost hurts," Val said. "It makes me wonder what her real father was like—she obviously didn't get any of it from that Eris woman." 

I shrugged. "No idea. The only time I saw him was when he was being prepped for the funeral and I had to sign off on something for another case at the funeral home. Blonde and not very big, like Alya. His name was . . . eh . . . Liam Gabriev." 

Val blinked. "Huh. Interesting. I wonder if he was any relation." 

"To who?" 

"Gourry Gabriev. And Lina Inverse. It _would_ explain why Alya has such a talent for magic." 

Wavering image of a tall blonde man with a sword with a blade made of light in his hands, skittering across my mind's eye . . . _Gorun Nova, the Sword of Light that slew the great beast Zanaffar in one blow . . ._ catching it with my bare hand and feeling an unpleasant tingle against my palm . . . 

"I don't suppose we'll ever find out," Val added. "If there ever were any records, they must have vanished years ago. At least she isn't given to punching or Fireballing people the way Lina always did . . . although I'm not quite sure I'm ever going to dare teach her that spell." 

I snorted, and listened with half an ear to the conversation from the entryway. 

"We're in the middle of supper, so you're going to have to take your bags upstairs yourself. It's the door to the left of the stairs, just like it was the last time. I know we're running late—Dad's business took longer than he was expecting. You'll have to ask him." 

A long pause. The sound of Eris's voice, too low-pitched to be understood. 

"I . . . don't think that's going to happen, Mom. Dad and Uncle Val are . . . I think they really love each other. Ask _them_ , not me. I can't . . . I'm not a _rope_ , Mom—stop trying to use me to play tug-of-war! Maybe you should have thought of that before you went away and _left_ me here! No, I don't think he cares about you at all. Not even enough to hate you." 

There was some more formless grumbling out front, and then Alya came back through the doorway to the kitchen. "Whew," she said, picking up her fork. "I hope she isn't staying for long. Mom's easier to deal with in small doses." 

"If I had my way, she'd be headed straight back to Gyria City," I said. "Alone. You know what to do if she tries to do anything stupid, like hustle you onto a plane." 

Alya nodded. "Let off a Lighting in her face and call you as fast as I can. You know, Dad, this security shit you put me through gets kind of old sometimes." 

"It isn't just something he does to you," Val said. "He likes contingency plans. Lots and lots of contingency plans. If I had a coin for every minute I've spent discussing them with him, I'd be able to throw together a dragon's hoard straight out of legend." 

After supper, Val cleaned the dishes with a wave of his hand. It was weird and fascinating, how I could feel the play of magic energies as they spread themselves over ceramic and metal and glass in infinitely thin layers and burned away everything that didn't belong. I still wasn't used to that. 

"I'm going upstairs for a bit," I told Val. "Half an hour, maybe. I need to think. If you need to kill anyone, make sure no one can find the bodies." 

He smirked. "I'll take them to the crater at the top of Mount Loa and toss them in. Don't worry." 

I leaned down and he leaned up and we exchanged . . . well, I _meant_ for it to be a quick kiss. Val clung, though, and drew it out. I wouldn't have minded, except that Alya started making gagging noises after a bit. Then, when I did finally get loose, I realized that Val was slanting a sidelong glance at Eris, who was sitting in the living room pretending to read a magazine she'd brought with her. _Marking your territory, were you? Crazy dragon. No way is that fucking woman ever going to touch me again. Even if she thought it was a good idea, I wouldn't let her._

Alya climbed the stairs ahead of me, and shut herself into her room to do whatever it is that girls her age do when they're alone in their rooms. Spend hours on her cell, probably. I went into the master bedroom. The wards Val had added to the walls brushed lightly against the edges of my mind, reminding me that they were there. I frowned. I'd wanted to try to track down whatever that fucking slimy-icy feeling at the edge of my mind was, but there were starting to be so many layers of this crap around that I was afraid I was going to . . . get confused or something. I compromised by leaving the door open, and flopped down on the unmade bed. 

That was fine for reducing the number of magic layers around me, but there were other distractions, too. Worse ones. 

" . . . what you see in that giant, hairy, overmuscled barbarian," Eris was grumbling. 

"Why, do you want him back?" I could almost see Val's smirk, and the arch of his brows. "Didn't think so. You humans have no taste. A big, strong partner is actually very attractive to a dragon—it means the hatchlings are more likely to survive. I don't mind the hairy part. And I'm old enough to remember real barbarians, the kind who wore rotting leather and used stone tools and raided farming towns because they never figured out agriculture. He isn't anything like that." 

"No, he's just full of himself." 

"He has a right to be. Although you wouldn't have any idea why. It's a good thing you never made him _really_ angry, though, or you might have found out." 

"You make it sound like you think he would have killed me." 

Again, I could see Val's shrug in my mind's eye. "He's certainly capable of it." 

"And that doesn't bother you?" 

"Why would it?" 

Eris spluttered. That, too, was a familiar sound: it meant she'd just run headlong into something incompatible with her fucking narrow worldview and was trying to keep her brain from frying. "I . . . you . . ." 

"Do you know what I think your real problem with him is? You like men you can push around, and you didn't want to be responsible for a kid alone, so after Liam Gabriev died you latched on to someone you thought would be glad to let you do his thinking for him. And then it turned out that the man you'd picked . . . was actually quite smart even if he wasn't interested in literature or science or whatever. And he was a lot stronger-willed than you. You hate him for not being what you expected—what you _planned_ on him being." 

"Shut up! How the hell can you understand?! I loved Liam, I really did. When I lost him, it was the end of my world. I was trying to look after his baby as best I could. When have _you_ ever lost someone you cared about that much?" 

There was a quiet, cold pause. Then, "Do you know where I got most of these scars?" Eris must have shaken her head, because Val continued relentlessly, "My people—not just my family or clan, but my entire _species_ —were massacred by another group of dragons. I nearly died with them. The man—the _being_ —you know as Gavin Drakkon saved my life, or I wouldn't be here talking to you. And then, at one point, I thought I'd lost him as well. Don't try to tell me what I know about grief or pain or survivor's guilt or any of the rest of it. I came within a hair of blowing up the entire fucking _world_ as a memorial to my dead." 

There was another pause, quite a long one, as Eris absorbed that. Then, "He isn't human, is he? I mean, really not . . ." 

"He was cursed long ago to be endlessly reincarnated in a human body . . . but no, the consciousness inside that body is fundamentally not human. Exactly what he is, he'll tell you himself if he chooses." 

"And you love him." 

The Val in my mind's eye smiled that sweet, weary smile of his. "More than anything." And then he went all hard-edged again. "And if you _ever_ let your eyes wander in his direction again, I'll kill you even if he doesn't." 

_Damned dragon . . . stop embarrassing me. I don't need your protection._ Why the fuck was I eavesdropping on them anyway? Val could look after himself. And if he did end up dumping Eris's body into a volcano, I'd cover for him. In the meanwhile, I needed to concentrate on finding the slimy-icy whatever-it-was. 

It would probably have helped if I'd been able to remember how to do . . . whatever the hell I was doing. As things stood, I had to grope blindly around inside my head for a while and hope that my subconscious would recognize the connection between me and the ward when I found it. And then I had to try to equate the feelings the ward gave me with locations, since it defined things relative to its center rather than relative to where I was. Fucking inconvenient. I was able to orient myself by figuring out that the west and north corners were the ones with all the faintly flickering humans passing through them, but icy-slimy wasn't near any of the corners. He (she? It?) was about a quarter of the way out from the middle, to the southwest of us. I thought it might be near the site of the old hardware store that had moved to a new building at the edge of town a couple of years ago. 

The question was, what the fuck was it? A lead, a trick, a trap . . . Well, we _were_ talking about something Xellos was mixed up in, here. There was no doubt that he'd _wanted_ me to find this. Which could be a good sign or a very, very bad one. 

Xellos was never on anyone's side but his own, and he had me running on rails. I bared my teeth, growling at the ceiling. My options were few. Ignoring the cold, slimy whatzis could be dangerous. Investigating it might be walking into a trap, but was that an actual danger to me? If this had been about anyone but Xellos, I would have expected to be able to bust any trap open from the inside, but there was always the danger that he'd thought of something that I hadn't. 

The third option was to send someone else to spring the trap in my place, but who? The thought of risking Val's life in a potential Xellos trap made me feel sick. Sending a human that I wanted to preserve would be worse. Instant death sentence. Sending a human I _didn't_ want to preserve . . . 

Come to think of it, I did have one of those. And no one would ever blame me if he got himself killed. 

I smirked at the ceiling as I considered how to set up Wizer Freion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more short chapter of introspection and family arguments and we'll get back to the action plot, I promise.


	17. Unsubtle Machinations

_I was leaning comfortably against warm scales in churning darkness._ The astral plane, _part of my mind recognized. The rest didn't care._

_Warm scales . . . warm, red scales . . . a gigantic dragon body, breathing slowly and evenly. I had my back to his shoulder—my shoulder?—and there was a pile of dragon heads a short distance away, three red and one dark and feathery._

_"Why now?" I said out loud, and one blue eye flicked open to stare at me from near the top of the head-pile._

_**Because you're being stubborn.** _

_"Don't you mean '_ We're _being stubborn?'"_

_**Yes and no. We are one and not-one, and this stubbornness comes entirely from the shallow part, the veneer of mortality.** _

_"So?"_

_**You think you can just throw away everything that we've been. For your information, it doesn't fucking work that way.** _

_"Doesn't it?"_

_**The more you fight, the more of what you're trying to hold onto will be erased as you return to being wholly us.** _

_"Then I'm just going to have to hang on for a bit longer than I expected," I growled back._

_**Do you think you can fight the others that way? Dynast, Dolphin . . . Xellos?** _

_"Dynast is an idiot, Dolphin's crazy, and Xellos is weaker than I am, so why not?"_

_**Xellos is subtle and dangerous—a puppet master just like Zelas was. His personal power level doesn't matter if we can't get near him. Fucking slimy little cone.** The dragon growled. It sounded like an earth tremor. **How long do you think you can hold on to what's ours if you won't let yourself remember how? You are us. We are you. Stuffing a handful of shitty little memories off into a separate compartment doesn't make you one bit less Gaav the Chaos Dragon.** _

_"And yet you're making that distinction too."_

_**Because you're making it! Ah, fuck, you're making our heads hurt.**_

I woke with a throbbing headache and a faint, peculiar sensation about three inches below my collarbone that I slowly realized was Val playing with my chest hair, letting a curl wrap around his fingers and then pulling it gently straight. 

"Are you all right?" he asked before I could say anything. 

"Why wouldn't I be?" 

"Because you're scowling." His fingers brushed against the space between my eyebrows, feather-light, and I realized he was right. "You might be able to hide your emotions from me, but the expression on your face is fair game." 

I sighed. Why not tell him the truth? "I gave myself a headache arguing with my subconscious. Or something like that." 

Val blinked. Then he started to laugh. "Shit, only you could . . ." 

"It isn't funny," I grumbled. 

"I'd classify it as 'bizarre and ridiculous', actually. Are we getting up?" 

Sparring outside in the cold dawn air eased the headache, surprisingly enough. Even though Val decided without consulting me that this was the day we should take our mock-battle to the next level, winking in and out of folded space. He got a couple of good hits on me before my instincts kicked in and I started to be able to follow what he was doing. 

I had a nice set of bruises, but they were already fading away as I stepped out of the shower. They'd been doing that for the past couple of days, since the power had broken loose under my skin. I ran my hand absently across my face, using a hint of that power to burn away the beginnings of beard stubble—there was probably something permanent I could do to keep it from growing back, but my hind-brain didn't seem to want to give up the information right now. 

The guy I saw in the mirror over the sink . . . really, I would have thought he'd changed these past couple of weeks, but even a careful look didn't detect much difference. Well, except the hair, which stuck up a bit in front and flowed down my shoulders and back in long blood-coloured streamers. The face it framed was the same as it had been for the past twenty-odd years, though, all strong features and bushy eyebrows. I cleaned up decently enough when I could be bothered, but no one would ever call me pretty. Below chin level, a lot of muscles that I'd never needed to put much effort into maintaining, and a lot more hair. No scales, wings, or tail, although I might not have been all that surprised if I'd found them. Pleased, even. _You have a gorgeous set of wings,_ Val had said. 

Overall it wasn't a bad face or a bad body, but, well, if I was a Dark Lord, why pick this in particular? What had been going on in my head back then that I'd thought I needed to turn the barbarian-alpha-male thing up to eleven? Or did Mazoku, even Dark Lords, just have a natural tendency to take on some specific shape that wasn't consciously chosen at all? 

_And what the fuck am I doing getting all philosophical about myself, anyway? Val's okay with how I look, and that's all that really matters. And he'd laugh his ass off if he knew I was being this fucking insecure,_ I told myself as I squeezed the last of the water out of my hair, tied it off, and went looking for some clean clothes. I ended up just twiddling my fingers at yesterday's and willing them clean. Useful stuff, magic. 

It had to be Eris, I thought as I tucked the bottom of my shirt in. She'd found my size and strength downright scary sometimes. And she'd tried to talk me into waxing my chest. I shook my head. _The whole thing was a fucking mistake, and even_ she _knows it, so why am I still letting it screw me up?_

A Dark Lord . . . probably didn't have to be civil to his failures all that often, now that I thought about it. Getting caught up in webs of relationships was a human thing, wasn't it? The Chaos Dragon Gaav from the days before the Kouma War probably would have turned Eris into meat paste if she offended him, but for Alya's sake, I'd just let her walk away. Which meant that, every so often, I got my nose rubbed into my biggest fuck-up since my most recent birth, leaving this . . . gnawing little hole inside me. 

_The more you fight, the more of what you're trying to hold onto will be erased as you return to being wholly us,_ dragon-me had said in my dream. But what about the things I held onto without trying to? 

I wasn't completely Mazoku, I knew that. I probably hadn't been for hundreds of years. But I was fucking sure I didn't want to be completely human, either. Now that I knew I was just playing a role, it was rubbing parts of me raw, but . . . _Alya . . ._

"Fuck," I told the floor. It would just be another six years or so until she was old enough to be out on her own. A tiny fragment of time, for an immortal. It shouldn't have mattered, but . . . how long was it going to take for this stupid role to wear raw holes all the way down to the bone? 

There's that story, about the monkey that stuck its hand into a jar to grab something, and then couldn't get its hand _out_ of the jar again without letting the fucking thing go. That's what I felt like just then. I didn't want to be here, doing this, putting on this fucking act, but at the same time I had someone depending on me, someone that I'd let worm her way inside me. Into a place like the one Val had found, but what Val needed from me was so much easier to give. He wasn't human either, didn't have that pattern of enmeshed fucking relationships. Alya was, and did. And for her I'd keep the mask on and the play going if it killed me. 

Downstairs, Eris had taken over the kitchen and was making pancakes, and Val leaned against the counter, sipping his tea. He held out my mug to me as I approached, but I leaned in as I accepted it and stole a kiss. I probably still had morning breath, but it didn't seem to bother him. 

That, more than anything, proved that what we had between us was solid, I guess—the way little things that would have driven either of us nuts if anyone else had done them just seemed okay when they were between him and me. 

"I was surprised to find that you had flour and baking powder in the house," Eris commented from the stove. 

I shrugged. "Val cooks a bit. Better than I do, anyway." 

"In self-defense," Val added, with a smirk. 

Eris flipped a pancake, catching it neatly in the pan. "Gavin." 

It took a moment to register— _Oh, right, that's me._ When I'd learned my real name, some switch inside me seemed to have flipped, and my old alias no longer drew my attention the way it had before. "Hm?" 

"If you're not human, what are you?" 

I shrugged. "Does it matter?" 

"Given that you have custody of _my daughter_? Yes, I would say it does." 

"Mom, do you remember what I said last night? I'm not a rope. Stop using me to try to play tug-of-war with Dad." Like Val and I, Alya was fully dressed for the day, in jeans and a pink blouse, as she stepped off the bottom of the staircase. "After all, it isn't like you really wanted me." 

Eris flinched, but she also got a familiar mulish expression on her face. "Because I decided to leave you with someone I thought would take better care of you, I don't have the right to worry?" 

_Fuck this._ I knew Eris: she'd keep poking and prying until she got an answer. So I would just get it over with. 

I set my half-forgotten tea mug down on the counter with a loud, clear _thunk_. "Whatever text your friend Howie managed to get his hands on was on the right track. I'm Mazoku, racially speaking. Politically, I broke from them a long time ago, and part of what's going on here is that I've got a Dark Lord gunning for my ass. Luckily, he's a coward, but that just means he's going to lay traps and attack the people around me rather than try to take me on directly. So if you've got any sense, you won't talk about this to _any_ one. If you do, not only will you be ruining Alya's life, but if this spreads, Dynast might try to blow up everything within a hundred-mile radius or some stupid shit like that to keep the information contained." 

"If the news spreads too far, the Dragon Gods may even try to toss their two-copper-worth in," Val added with a grimace. "Which would make even more of a mess. They're less concerned with the affairs of mortals than you could possibly imagine." 

Meanwhile, Alya was frowning. "Why would it ruin _my_ life?" Well, she was still just a kid. 

"Think about it, brat. If my nature gets to be common knowledge, it isn't just going to be other Mazoku that'll be making trouble for me, it's going to be humans, too. Everyone from paparazzi looking to interview me to priests looking to exorcise me. It might be exciting for you at first, but once the novelty wore off I think you'd start finding it was a pain in the ass. You'd be going around just trying to live your life, and then some obnoxious bastard would be sticking his nose into your personal space. Val and I can just get the hell out of here if problems like that start, hide out in the high desert or a pocket in the astral plane for a couple of years until everyone's moved on and then take up new identities somewhere else if we feel a need, but taking you with us . . ." I shrugged. "I don't think you're ready to just up and leave everything behind, and it would fuck up your education beyond belief." 

Alya's frown deepened. "Oh." 

I wasn't sure she entirely believed me, but just then I was grappling with the realization that I really didn't give a flying fuck about any aspect of Gavin Drakkon's life except her. It had been less than two weeks since I'd found Val—that was all the time it had taken for everything to slough away, any feeling of caring about my job or this place or its people. Not that I'd ever been strongly attached. The real problem, I guess, was that I still didn't remember much of anything about my real life as Gaav, and when the hell had Gavin become so very _un_ real? It left a kind of gap inside me. 

_The more you fight, the more of what you're trying to hold onto will be erased as you return to being wholly us,_ whispered recent memory. 

_Fuck off,_ I told it. 

The only pancake syrup in the house was slightly past its best-before date. I ate it anyway—tasted fine as far as I could tell. Val spread his pancakes with strawberry jam. Alya tried one each way and said that the jam was actually pretty good. Eris retrieved a little bottle of sugar-free-something-or-other from her luggage and used that instead of the ordinary syrup. At least she didn't take the opportunity to snipe at me for my "unhealthy diet", which had never hurt me in the least. I mean, I'd always carried so fucking little of my weight in body fat that one doctor had told me he'd have been worried about it if I'd been fully human. 

Around the time we finished eating, Alya started giving me sidelong looks, and I knew what that meant. "Spit it out, brat." 

"Well . . . Kira kind of invited me over . . ." She gave me a hopeful, fearful look. 

"It's fine," I told her. "Part of the point of what we were doing yesterday was to make sure the Mazoku wouldn't have any easy way of finding out where I am. So for all they know, I could be following you around. If any of them do show up, though, you need to do your best to stay away. Especially if it's Xellos, or Sherra. Or Dynast, but I doubt he has the balls to do his own dirty work." 

Alya nodded. "I didn't actually _see_ Dynast or Sherra, but I remember their voices. But . . . um . . . Dad, are you going to get a new phone?" 

Right, I'd fried mine. I'd almost forgotten. "I'll try to remember to do something about it today. Until I do, call Mazenda if you need me." 

That meant that, after I'd checked in at the station and told Mazenda to get ahold of Wizer Freion and convince him to meet with me that afternoon, I hauled my ass over to the little Justice Communications cellphone kiosk in the mall that straddled the border between East Sairaag County and Sairaag proper, with Val as my quiet shadow. 

I explained what had happened to the kid running the kiosk, lying as necessary, and handed him the fried phone. He checked it over. And checked it over. It took him three examinations before he agreed that there was no salvaging the card inside, and a while longer on the phone to someone who actually knew more about phones than how to sell them before he understood what to do about it. And I had to pay the full cost of the original phone plus an "upgrade fee" because they didn't make that kind anymore. At least the phone I finally ended up with was big enough that I could operate it with my _index_ finger, and not just the pinkie. 

I also got Val a cheap flip-phone, 'cause I wanted Alya to be able to call him, too, if I was out of reach. He rolled his eyes, but took it, and spent most of our ride back using a dragon talon to engrave it with a ward he hoped would channel any circuit-frying energies around it, with a side order of the ur-language spell. 

We got back to the office around half an hour before lunch. Mazenda nodded to me the moment I walked in the door. 

"You're set for one o'clock, Boss," she said, then went back to fiddling with her computer. 

So that meant the next step was done. I went back to my stacks of paperwork feeling better than I had in a while. 

I'll give Wizer this. He knew how to be prompt. Val and I were just finishing up the pizza I'd ordered when he showed up, with Emil in tow as always. 

I tossed the pizza box into the garbage, where it stuck out at an awkward angle. 

"Still want to make a name for yourself in the PBI?" I asked with a smirk.


	18. Glittering Eyes, Glittering Blades

It was a good-sized, empty parking lot surrounding a large, empty building. There wasn't a single bit of cover within twenty feet of the walls, which made it fucking difficult to keep a good eye on the place without being spotted. Val and I settled for keeping a not-so-good eye, lying on the far side of the peaked roof of the travel agency across the street and peering around the chimney. 

We weren't just hiding from whatever was roosting inside the empty building. Wizer didn't know we were here either, and I preferred to keep it that way. 

Fifteen minutes. I shifted uncomfortably. Where was that PBI idiot? 

"We never used to do this kind of shit ourselves, did we?" I asked Val. 

My dragon shook his head. "We used to have more than enough minions to take care of this kind of thing." 

"Let me guess—there's no way we can get them back." 

Another headshake. "They're dead, mostly. A few of them went over to the other Dark Lords, but even if we could persuade them to switch sides again, I don't think I'd trust them. You could always try spawning a couple of new ones. Or I could, I guess, although I've never actually done it before and I'm not sure what the . . . outcome . . . would be." 

I grimaced—I'd tried to forget what Emil had said about Mazoku reproducing by binary fission. It made me feel too much like a fucking amoeba in someone's petri dish. I was actually kind of glad when Wizer's car pulled up and put an end to the conversation. 

Wizer and Emil and a third man I didn't know got out of the car and went around to the side door. The third man unlocked it and they all went inside. No fireworks. No nothing, actually. 

I glanced at Val, who shrugged. "Wizer's suspicious, the other two are bored, and they're all moving towards the back of the building. Beyond that, I can't— Wait. Something's happening. Shock . . . fear . . . anger . . . pain. So it really was a trap. Do you want to go in while whatever's inside is still distracted, or just leave it?" 

I shook my head. "If we leave it, there's always a chance we're going to get attacked from behind. Better to clean it up now. It's just too bad it's going to have the side effect of saving that asshole Wizer." 

Val snorted. "I'm not about to argue. Do we go in through the door, teleport straight through the wall, or . . . ?" 

"You're going to take the roof off," I told him. "I'd do it myself, but I still don't know my own strength—better if I don't make a mess." 

"Mmm. The whole building?" 

"If you can. It doesn't feel like it's protected." Although how I knew that, I wasn't sure. 

"As you will, Lord Gaav." Val gave me a razor-edged grin, and stood up, no longer hiding behind the angle of the roof we were on. He raised his arm and pointed with his entire hand at the ex-hardware-store, muttering something under his breath. 

I felt a kind of shiver on the edge of my consciousness—another fucking inexplicable perception—as four sword-shaped things dropped from the sky to land at the corners of the trap-building. 

" _Abyssal Disintegrate,_ " Val said firmly. Red light flickered over the roof, carving it into tiny little pieces, and then it collapsed with a roar as the sword-things evaporated. 

I didn't wait for it to finish falling in. Instead, I grabbed a fold of space and shifted us to a point a couple of feet above where the roof had been, near the back of the building, supporting us in the air by the force of my will. 

Inside the space revealed by the collapsing roof was an awful lot of dust and debris, and . . . 

Warned by some sixth sense, I dodged back to escape the flying bolt of blue light. I wasn't sure it was strong enough to actually do me any damage, but I didn't want to risk finding out, either. Just in case. 

"You know you're wasting your time, Sherra," Val called down. "Do you honestly think you can do anything to either of us, when your power's less than a quarter of mine and not even in the same league as Lord Gaav's?" 

The response was more blue lightning. This time, Val set up some kind of shield for it to splash against. Knowing that we weren't going to get anywhere if we couldn't see what the fuck was going on below, I willed up a good stiff wind, sending a dust storm off down the street. 

The inside of the building was a mess—not really surprising. The fallen roof had left crap all over the place. The guy who'd unlocked the building for Wizer was out cold on the floor under a pile of debris, Wizer himself had his gun out and was facing off with Sherra, and Emil was hiding in a corner. The three conscious people were staring up at us. Wizer, I noted, was frowning deeply. Emil just looked like he wanted to pass out, and Sherra . . . her face was blank, but I guessed she was pretty pissed off. 

I nodded to Val, and then released the energy that was holding us in mid-air. As Val dropped, he yanked the huge sword I'd seen in his hands when we'd first met out of his astral pocket and brandished it at Sherra, who raised her much more slender sword in reply. 

I didn't bother pulling a weapon. Sherra was far more powerful than those wolf-things that had been sealed up with Val, I knew, and guns hadn't done the least bit of damage to them. I was better off with my fists . . . and besides, wasn't wading into this unarmed exactly the kind of thing an overconfident Dark Lord would do? 

I narrowed my eyes, watching Val and Sherra's blade-dance for a moment. My dragon was the more skilled of the two, I had no doubt of that, but Sherra's speed was keeping him on his toes. 

He managed to back her up against a pile of debris, blade locked against blade, immobilizing her for a split second. I could feel her grabbing at space, about to twist herself back into the astral plane, and I struck myself, a side-cutting gesture with my extended hand that I didn't understand until my fingers seemed to sink into something warm and squirming and I realized that the taloned hand of my astral form had hit her. Sherra let out a thin scream as Val knocked her sword from her hands, sending it spinning end-over-end until it landed point-down in a pile of rubble. 

I yanked my hand back, and Sherra screamed again, black vapour fountaining from her side. Then Val brought the sword down . . . and straight through her. 

Sherra's scream became an unearthly howl, and her body flickered, glowed blue for a moment, and disintegrated into a pile of grey dust. Just like something out of one of those video games that Alya loved so much. I poked at the dust pile with my foot, but if she was faking her death, she was doing too good a job for me to pick up on it. Beside me, Val sighed and lowered his sword, pulling the scabbard out of his astral pocket. 

I'm pretty sure we both narrowly stopped ourselves from jumping when a shot rang out. Wizer had both eyes wide open, and was staring at a medium-dog-sized grey-white spider that had pulled itself out of the rubble. His pistol was out and pointed at the thing, but movement among the debris suggested there were more of them. Lots and lots more of them. 

I stomped on one that popped up near my foot. Rather than squishing like a normal bug, it seemed to shatter into more grey powder. These were true Mazoku then, even if weak ones. 

"Shit," I muttered, and stomped on another. These were no danger to me or Val even in large numbers, but to humans . . . Wizer emptied his pistol into the one that had first approached him, but that didn't do any damage. I'd have been pretty surprised if it had. I kicked the spider up in the air and squished it against one of the support pillars for the missing roof, but there were already more coming. 

"Get the fuck back there with Emil and the other guy!" I snapped at Wizer, waving my hand. "We'll take care of these crappy things!" 

Wizer wasn't listening. Instead, he made a grab for Sherra's sword, still sticking up out of the rubble. 

"Wizer, stop!" Val yelled from over on my other side. "Don't touch that! Oh, fuck—" 

Wizer, not understanding a word of course, glanced briefly over his shoulder, then gripped the sword and pulled it loose from the rubble. 

For a moment, everything was still and silent. Even the spiders had stopped dead right where they were. Then something moved at the edges of my perception, a ripple of power. 

Wizer raised his head. His eyes were glowing a cold blue. The sword in his hand twitched, and so did the skin of the hand itself, as though something was moving underneath it. No, scratch that, something _was_ moving under it—I could see it, like worms crawling around under his skin. 

"That's just great," Val muttered. I raised an eyebrow to prompt him. "The sword's name is Dulgofa. It's an independent Mazoku that worked with Sherra. Its specialty is possessing humans." 

"Dangerous?" 

Val shook his head. "I could fry it easily, but we're going to have to come up with some explanation for Wizer's death. Which wouldn't be a problem if not for him." He nodded in Emil's direction. The young PBI agent was still staring at us, white-faced but still fucking wide awake. And there were still spiders running around all over the fucking place, that had to be stopped before they got out of the building. Panic in the streets wouldn't help the situation any. 

I _could_ just fry everything. Disintegrate it all into a few handfuls of grey powder—Mazoku, potential witnesses, and what was left of the building. Then Emil wouldn't be able to say a fucking thing about what had happened to Wizer, because they'd probably have to shovel what few remains the two of them left into the same fucking urn. And really, why shouldn't I? What the _fuck_ was holding me back? Not any kind of fellow-feeling, that was for fucking sure. And Alya would never know, because I wouldn't tell her, and neither would Val. But . . . but . . . 

_It feels like losing,_ I realized. In a sense, every single human and beastman life in this fucking county was my responsibility. With Sherra dead, I was one point up in the game right now—or maybe even, if you figured Old Man Axel into the score—but losing Wizer and Emil and the nameless key-carrier would drop me into the hole again. And it fucking pissed me off to realize I was thinking that way. Especially since I'd chosen Wizer specifically because I didn't give a damn about him. 

Wizer's arm was beginning to distort, turning an odd shade of blue-purple as swellings worked their way along his veins. We might have a few more seconds before he went on the attack. So I squashed yet another spider and turned to Val, who was dancing from one grey-white back to the next and throwing his full weight onto them. Even in human form, dragons weigh a lot, more than Mazoku flesh and bone could handle. 

"Is there any way we can get those two apart again?" I asked him, nodding at Wizer, who was currently holding his arm and making weird, pained noises. 

Val frowned. "With Wizer still alive, you mean? I can't, and you can't, but maybe . . . shit, this would be easier if . . . He said something at one point about having been trained as a shrine priest, didn't he?" My dragon gestured at Emil. "I need to know how far he got." 

I relayed the question. Emil blinked several times. 

"I . . . would have been eligible for the Third Ascension, but I never actually . . ." 

"'Do you believe in the Dragon Gods?'" Val asked through me. 

"Well, yes, of course I do, but—" 

"'Then focus your mind on them and on Wizer, and repeat everything I say _exactly_ , even if you don't understand it, because the only version of this spell I know is in one of the dragon languages. I can't cast it myself—holy magic of this magnitude would do me a lot of damage—but it should be okay for you.'" 

At that moment, Wizer threw himself forward, sword slashing. "Mazoku! How dare—" 

I cut off whatever he was saying by blasting him into the far wall. "Do it," I growled at Emil. "I'll keep your boss occupied. Remember, if this fails, I'll probably have to kill him." 

Emil swallowed visibly. "Yessir." 

Where the fuck had it all gone so wrong? I asked myself that as I bounced Wizer around the huge empty room, trying to turn him in midair so that Dulgofa cut into a spider or three with each bounce—the low-slung vermin didn't do all that well with 3D fights, I guess. If I'd just destroyed the entire building from the outside, this would have been done and over with, but oh, no, I'd had to find out what was going on. Xellos had probably counted on that, on the fact that I hated not knowing. He'd probably even known that part of me was going to be trying to keep score, and that I'd end up— 

White and gold light was flaring from the floor in a huge circle maybe twenty feet across. I could hear Val's voice prompting and Emil's repeating, a few syllables at a time. Hoping that I was doing the right thing, I dumped Wizer in the middle of the circle and threw my power into holding him and Dulgofa down. As much of it as I could get away with, anyway. I didn't want to stave the idiot's ribcage in. 

" _Amre Fiul Gaena!_ " Emil finished, and the lit circle flared toward the sky. I had one boot partway over the edge, and the light stung my toes. I swore and yanked that foot back, releasing my mental grip on Wizer as well as pain sparkled through my head. Inside the circle, something screamed, a drawn-out, inhuman sound. 

When the light faded, Wizer was face down in the middle of the rubble, with only normal human skin showing through his split left sleeve. Dulgofa was about six inches from his fingertips. 

"Did . . . justice prevail?" Emil said, sounding exhausted. He was swaying on his feet, and his hair had turned ice white. 

I went over and prodded Wizer with my foot. He was out cold, but he looked human. Felt human, in some way I didn't entirely understand. 

"Looks like it," I said. 

"Oh. Good." Emil collapsed face-down on a pile of rubble, sliding several inches down the slope until his nose was pressed to the ground. 

Val snorted. "It was too much spell for him, I guess. I thought it might be, but I don't have any idea how to assess a human's aptitude for casting holy spells to begin with." 

"Mmh. Grab him and the other one. I'll get Wizer. Once we've got them all outside, we can fry the building." 

Val raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. He grabbed Emil and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then grabbed the arm of the nameless guy and disappeared into a fold in space. 

I squished a few more spiders, grabbed Wizer by the front of his collar, and moved us both across the street. 

"The best tactic," said Val from beside me as I dropped the unconscious PBI agent on the sidewalk, "would probably be to fire down on it from above, several times if necessary. That should minimize the amount of spillover." 

I nodded. "Go," I told him. My dragon vanished, leaving me behind on the sidewalk with three unconscious men. 

I watched as dark fire dropped from his hands, pulverizing what was left of the empty hardware store. Hopefully he would end up getting all the spiders. By the time he was done, even the concrete walls had been reduced to fine grey ash. 

It felt . . . kind of anticlimactic, really. Much too easy for a battle that had eliminated the third-most-powerful member of our opponent's forces. And that made the fact that _Xellos_ was involved in all this float to the top of my mind again, like pond scum in a stagnant pool. It felt wrong. It felt like a distraction. But from what? I checked the ward quickly, almost unconsciously, and found nothing odd. There were no Mazoku in the area except Val and me. 

"Copper for your thoughts?" Val was back again. 

I shook my head. "Something isn't right, but I'm fucked if I know what." 

"I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels that way." My dragon offered me a lopsided grin. "Do you want to drop these guys at the hospital?" 

"Can we be sure Wizer is clean?" 

"Dulgofa's a pile of ash, so I would say yes." 

"Take them to the hospital, then. I'm going to check in with Mazenda." 

And we each went our separate ways through the folds of space. Mazenda didn't bat an eyelash when I appeared in front of her—I guess she was getting used to weird crap going on around her. 

"No calls, boss," she said. 

I waited for a moment, and frowned when she didn't continue. "Not even from Alya? Is she here?" 

Mazenda shook her head. "I haven't heard a peep out of the kid all day. I assumed you'd sent her somewhere safe." 

"She was with one of her friends, but she knows the drill is for her to check in before one o'clock if she's out all morning." The back of my neck was prickling coldly. I pulled out my new phone and dialed Alya's number, but text marched across the display as a pre-recorded voice spoke in my ear. 

"The number you have dialed is not—" 

I hung up. The coldness was filling my entire body now. 

"Val." I spoke his name out loud to the air, not knowing what I was expecting to accomplish. 

"Yes, Lord Gaav?" And there he was beside me, looking up at me with concern. My dragon. 

"Alya hasn't contacted you in the past couple of minutes, has she?" 

"No." I could see the understanding dawning on his face as well. 

"Fuck. Mazenda, get me a phone number for the Runan family. They live on Darkmoor Crescent." 

"Runan, Runan . . ." Mazenda checked an old-fashioned paper phone book, then did something to her computer. "They've got a land-line and three cells, from the looks of it." 

"Give me the land-line first." 

Ten rings. Nothing. Cell number one was the man of the household, at work at the pharmacy downtown. He didn't know what might be happening back at the house, of course, but he was able to tell me which of the other numbers was whose, and that _his_ father, now retired, should have been at home with the girls . . . and answering the land-line, since he didn't "hold with newfangled pocket phones". 

Next, I tried Kira Runan directly. When she answered, the background noises suggested she was in a public place, maybe a shopping mall. 

"Um, hello?" 

"This is Sheriff Drakkon." Well, sort of. "Is Alya with you?" 

"Yeah—well, not _with_ with, not right at this second. We ran into her mother here, and she said that she'd found some clothes that would look perfect on Alya, so she went with her to have a look." 

Eris? The back of my neck was prickling again. 

"Alya isn't answering her cell," I said. "Where are you?" 

"Alya always says you're paranoid—" 

" _Where?!_ " I growled, repressing the several other things I would have liked to have said. They might have made me feel better for a split second, but they wouldn't have gotten any information out of the girl. 

"Grandpa took us to the mall . . . urgh, what is this place supposed to be called . . . the Sunshine Mall." 

It took me a moment to remember which one that was: just over the border into Sairaag proper, and outside the ward I'd cast so painstakingly. _Fuck._ Alya probably _had_ known better, but she might have allowed Kira to talk her into it. 

"Thanks for your time." I probably snapped it more than said it. I might even have broken the connection before I finished saying it. It wasn't like I gave a flying fuck about the stupid girl's feelings. 

The Sunshine Mall . . . I'd been there a couple of times, so I was able to dredge out a memory of the side-hall leading to the parking garage and move Val and I there through a fold in space. 

"If there are any Mazoku here, I can't tell," my dragon said. "There are too many humans—I can't sense much of anything over the mix of emotions." 

I nodded grimly and led him into the mall proper. Between my size and my expression, people just about jumped over each other to get out of our way. 

I flashed my badge at several store clerks (who weren't likely to know or care that I was technically out of my jurisdiction), showed them Alya's picture, and said the magic word: _kidnapping_. It didn't do me much good. One or two people had seen her with Kira, but no one remembered Eris. 

The mall was roughly square-shaped, with the parking at one corner and the food court at another. We were dodging between small tables when someone tugged at my sleeve. 

"Sheriff Drakkon? Sir?" The pink-haired girl looked pretty nervous. "I'm Kira Runan." 

I turned to face her. So did Val. "Anything?" I asked, knowing that she'd have to be an idiot not to get what I meant . . . and while I might not think much of some of Alya's friends, none of them were completely stupid. 

Her pigtails jiggled as she shook her head. "Alya hasn't come back. I haven't seen her mom either, and they weren't in the store when I went to check." Her throat worked visibly as she swallowed. "I'm sorry. I kinda think . . . this is all my fault, isn't it? She didn't want to come here, but I pushed it . . . I just wanted to take her mind off things . . ." 

"We don't know for sure anything's wrong yet," I said, even though my guts were cold and churning like I'd swallowed a frozen snake. "Which store did they go to?" 

"That one over there. Hightown Fashions." Kira pointed to a little boutique-y place a few stores down from the food court. 

"Right. Thanks, kid." It didn't cost me anything to say it, I told myself. 

The clerk had seen Alya and Eris enter, which was something. She hadn't seen them leave—in fact, until I asked her, she'd thought they were still in the store, but I was tall enough to see over the racks and shelves and I could tell that neither of them were there. 

I could still ask at the stores on either side, or have Alya paged over whatever speaker system the place might have, but I was willing to bet it wouldn't do any good. 

"There was someone here," Val said from his position at my elbow. "Xellos, maybe. The traces are too faint for me to be able to tell." 

Saying it would make it real . . . but not saying it wouldn't cause it to never have happened. "There are a couple of other things I can try . . . but I think they have Alya." 

Val grimaced. "So do I." Then, completely unexpectedly, he reached over and tangled his fingers in my hair. "If it's true, then wherever they've taken her, we'll get her back. No matter what I have to do to make it happen. I promised you I would protect her, after all." 

_To the last drop of my blood . . ._

"Hopefully it won't come to that." But statements like that always tempt fate. 

There was, as Val had said a couple of days ago, nothing that I could usefully pray to, but just then I wished for some concerned higher power I might be able to beg a favour from. 

_If the worst happens . . . Who am I supposed to choose? Which of you can I possibly give up?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The spells in this chapter are made up. Dulgofa is from the later novels, making its first appearance in _The Cursed Sword of Bezeld_.


	19. Cat's Cradle

My hands itched with the need to destroy something. To flatten the fucking city of Sairaag until I found where they were hiding. Assuming they were there at all. Because I couldn't _do_ anything. I'd already ordered an all-points bulletin on Eris and Alya to be sent out, with that magic word "kidnapping" in it again, and the Sairaag City Police had acknowledged it, as had the security department at Flagoon Memorial. They couldn't leave the city, or move around it by mundane means. Val was using some kind of spell to try to find them, or any evidence of Xellos or Dynast, through the Astral Plane, and I kept telling myself that he was bound to succeed sooner or later. 

"Breathing on the radio isn't going to make it work any better," Mazenda pointed out. "In fact, it might break it—it's been kind of touchy since the old office blew up. Why don't you go sit down, Boss? We'll tell you if anyone finds anything." _Stop breathing down my neck,_ her expression said. 

I knew that shutting myself up in the inner office wouldn't help my temper any, but if I stayed here, I was going to end up busting something I didn't want to, so . . . "I'll be back in ten minutes," I growled, and tugged at a fold in space. 

The little pocket dimension was dark and quiet . . . but not silent or lightless, with the waves lapping softly against the beach. I crunched across the sand to one of the glowing stone pillars and punched it as hard as I could, feeling the sting as the force of the impact split the skin over my knuckles. The damage healed before my eyes, though. 

There wasn't much of the would-be human Gavin Drakkon left anymore. Just Alya. And my resolve. The rest was Gaav. 

What if . . . 

What if that had been what Xellos wanted? The return of the Chaos Dragon, and nothing more? Stealing Alya would make sense then, a clear and terrible kind of sense. And they would find her body in a few days time in a dumpster among the back streets of Sairaag . . . 

No! _Hell,_ no! 

**It would only take a flick of our mind, if you'd just stop fucking _pretending_.**

My head whipped around, but there was nothing there. 

**So close,** the three-headed dragon who seemed to be part of me crooned inside my head. **So very close. Just one single step . . .**

"Shut up," I growled. And punched the glowing crystal again, just for good measure, almost relishing the sting. 

If I gave in now, what would the point of having held out for so long be? _Was_ there a point? Had there ever been? 

When does the price of saving something become too high, or the price of stepping off into the unknown become low enough to make it worthwhile? Are there times you need to destroy something in order to save it? 

_Shit._ If I hadn't been losing my mind before, I knew I had to be now. I was philosophising _and_ hearing voices. 

If the only way to save Alya was to let myself return to being entirely Gaav . . . If it was the only way, I would have to gamble on surviving the transition with my priorities intact. Or on Val prompting me to return to the path I was currently forcing myself to walk. If he would. If I gave him one order with my memory in its current state, and a different one with it intact, which set of orders would he follow? 

— _"plenty of mindlessly obedient slaves. You don't need another one. I'll act in your best interests, even if that means violating the letter of my orders."_

_Cocky little dragon. He_ would _believe that's for the best._ — 

The headaches were getting worse. Maybe because it was taking more and more effort to keep the dam from just bursting altogether. 

"Lord Gaav . . ." 

Val looked as tired as I suddenly felt as he appeared by my elbow. 

"Did you find her?" I demanded. 

He shook his head. "It's weirder than that. Eris just showed up and turned herself in." 

Coming from anyone else, I would have thought it was a tasteless joke, but Val wouldn't do that. _What the fuck?!_ Xellos' manipulation? Independent action? Even the Beast-Priest wasn't omniscient . . . 

"Let's go," I said, and bent space around us. 

The outer office, back on the Physical Plane, was unexpectedly crowded. Eris and Mazenda, I'd expected, but not Professor Zeldon Greywords and a second man who looked almost exactly like him, except that he was younger and both his eyes were the same colour. That, and he was wearing a coat that was almost as eye-searingly red as my hair. And he seemed to be trying to comfort Eris. 

"Would someone mind explaining what the fuck is going on?" I asked. "We'll start with you two, since it's likely to be shorter." I pointed at the Prof and his look-alike. 

Professor Greywords sighed. "This is my cousin, Doctor Rezo Greywords, from the University of Seyruun. He studies cosmology and magic history, and he wanted to talk to Val. We didn't expect we would be showing up in the middle of . . . whatever this is. And if you don't mind my asking, what happened to your hair?" 

"It developed a mind of its own when I got mixed up in the lunatic fringe of the Wars of Gods and Monsters," I growled. "Now. Eris. Your turn. What the _fuck_ did you think you were doing at that mall, and what happened afterwards?" 

"I . . . I . . ." 

"Do you really have to be so harsh with her?" Rezo Greywords interrupted. 

"She kidnapped my daughter, and I don't know what happened after that or where the fuck Alya is. The only reason she isn't in a fucking cell is that we don't have any on the premises at the moment, and I don't want to waste time taking her into the city." 

"He said that . . . Liam . . ." Eris tried to begin again, but it came out fragmented. 

"You don't actually have to tell him anything without a lawyer present," Rezo Greywords said, his hand resting on her shoulder. 

Eris gave a hopeless little laugh. "You don't know Gavin. He gets what he wants. One way or the other." She took a deep breath. "I think I need to do this in order. Even if it takes a little longer." 

"Just don't waste time," I told her. 

"I wasn't going to. I . . . care for her too, you know." Another deep breath. "I met him at the airport in Gyria City. I'd just broken up with Howard, right after hearing the news about Alya's school, and I was . . . lonely, I guess. I knew there was something weird about him from the moment he introduced himself as 'Xellos, the Mysterious Priest', but I didn't really care." 

Val made a sound like " _Tch_ ". 

"Go on," I said. 

"He said he could . . . that he had found some old books on pre-Plague magical cloning techniques. I still have a bit of Liam's hair, and I was hoping that . . . Anyway, this man Xellos said I could have the books if I just did him one little favour. He said he just wanted to talk to Alya. He promised she wouldn't be harmed. And I . . . wanted to believe him." 

"And so you helped him kidnap her." I gave her a cold look. 

"And so I agreed to get her to come to a certain store alone. We really were looking at clothes when I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was in a barn." 

I blinked. _What the fuck?_

"Alya was . . . they'd tied her to a chair, and she was . . . at Xellos . . . well, she sounded like you. And there were a half-dozen other . . . things . . . there too, and a black-haired man who seemed to be in charge. Xellos gave me a slimy-sounding apology for 'accidentally catching me in the fringes of his sleep spell,' and the other man told him to get rid of me. Then Xellos took me outside for a few minutes . . . then I was back at the mall, in the ladies' room." 

I exchanged glances with Val. "Accidentally, my ass," I said. "Xellos doesn't do anything by accident. He wanted you to see that barn, and I'd bet he wanted you to tell us about it, too. You said he took you outside, into the farmyard or whatever. Tell me what you remember about it." Since Xellos hadn't let anything slip verbally, there had to be some landmark that would lead us to the place. Playing keep-away didn't make any sense when he had a hostage. I mean, it wasn't like he was going to drop us a fucking ransom note, and if he wanted to hurt her he'd do it in front of me, for maximum impact. Otherwise, there would be no point. 

"There was . . . something sticking up from behind one of the buildings . . . some piece of machinery. A crane, maybe? And there was yellow tape across the door to the house, the type you use on crime scenes." 

A crane? Or . . . a backhoe? "A dirt yard?" 

Nod. 

"Was there part of a dead tree lying near the entrance to the drive?" 

"I don't know. If there was, I didn't see it. Do you . . . know where it is?" 

"Maybe." In fact, I was willing to bet that I did. The idea of things coming full circle just seemed to fit, somehow. Was Xellos a completist? "If I'm wrong, we're going to have to search the area again and hope that she hasn't been taken halfway around the world . . . but I don't see why he'd do that. Still, Mazenda, start phoning around and asking about recent crime scenes on farms in the adjacent counties, just in case. Val, you're with me." 

There was one place on Old Man Axel's farm that loomed larger in my recent memory than the others. The sudden transition from well-lit office to the dark stone room made me blink . . . but it was quiet and private and there were a few things that Val and I needed to talk about before we tried to confront Dynast and Xellos. I could feel them not all that far away, though. Or at least I could feel Dynast, burning coldly against the edges of my mind. Xellos was . . . elusive, but I would have been pretty fucking surprised if he wasn't. 

Val created a dim light spell and set it in the air just above our heads. 

"Do you want to try to plan this, or do we just barge in there?" he asked. 

"Plan. As much as we can, anyway. You can bet your ass that _Xellos_ has a plan." 

Val scowled. "Yeah. Lord Gaav, I hope you have some idea of what we should do, because I have none whatsoever." 

"Alya's safety has to be our first priority," I began. "She's the most fragile piece in all this. Although at least she isn't vulnerable to astral attacks. The second priority is getting rid of Xellos. Dynast may be more powerful, but that fucking cone's infinitely more dangerous. Conceited little asshole. Does he think I can't see his puppet strings?" 

"He might," Val replied seriously. "He underestimated _me_ , certainly. I'm pretty sure Zelas encouraged his ego." 

"Hmpf. If you can see a way of doing it without getting killed, distract Dynast for me while I work on flattening Xellos. They won't be expecting that. Be careful, though." 

"As you wish." 

_There's one other thing._ I wanted to say it, _needed_ to say it, but the words just wouldn't come out. 

"What's wrong?" Val put his hand on my arm, looking up into my face. 

I sighed. No, there was no putting it off. Not this time. No matter how much I wanted to. "You said there was a quick way of getting my memories back—some kind of emergency thing. I need to know what it is." 

"Then . . ." 

"I don't want to use it, but I have a feeling that I'm going to have to. The stakes have gotten too high for me to go on taking fucking stupid risks and relying on my subconscious to get me out of them." 

My dragon nodded soberly and pulled a familiar sword out of nowhere. "Take this, then," he said, offering me the huge weapon. "It's properly yours—a small fragment of your astral body. If you draw it, then everything should . . . just link up." 

I took it from him. Without thinking, I slung it over my shoulder, adjusting it against my back. It felt exactly right there. I reached for the hilt in what was almost an automatic motion, then paused, lowering my hand. _Not unless I absolutely have to._

"Let's go," I said. 

We climbed out of the pit and I led the way around to the back of the barn. At least Axel's farm was inside the ward, so Dynast and Xellos wouldn't be able to tell exactly where I was. Why the fuck I hadn't been able to feel Dynast from further away, I didn't know, unless he was somehow shaping his power so that the ward wouldn't react. 

_Too much fucking complexity,_ I thought. _Too many pointless moves intended to confuse. I'm surprised Xellos' plans don't blow up in his face more often, unless he's hoping my brain'll explode and save him the trouble of having to deal with me._

I put my hand on the weathered wood of the barn's back wall. They'd be expecting us to either come in through the door or just teleport inside. 

Fuck that. 

I smirked as I applied a pulse of power and sent greyish splinters and metal shingles flying off into the air. Turning the entire building into shrapnel might have been overkill, but it made me feel better . . . for about half a second. Then space twisted around us like someone was preparing it to be tie-dyed.


	20. Incarnation of the Devil

I stumbled and rammed my shoulder hard into a translucent milky-white wall that hadn't been there a moment ago. Fucking thing was so cold that I could feel it through my coat, and the back of my hand burned where I'd brushed bare skin against the white surface. _Ice?_ I definitely had frostbite on my knuckles. 

Val hadn't been lucky enough to have a wall in the way. Instead, he was on his knees spitting curses at a blue-tinted white floor. I held out my hand to him—no point in him getting frostbite too—and he took it and pulled himself to his feet. 

A quick look around showed ice walls in all directions, plus an ice ceiling and an ice floor. There was an archway in the wall to our right, and the only light was an eerie blue luminescence which seemed to come from the ice itself. 

"Any ideas?" I asked Val, who shrugged. 

"It matches the descriptions you always gave me of Dynast's ice fortress. We're either in a very different part of the physical plane from where we were a minute ago, or we're in an astral pocket—it's hard to tell. Other than that, I don't know." 

"Is there anyone else here?" 

Val grimaced. "Your guess is as good as mine. The entire place is warded. I can't feel anything through the shields." 

The empty ice-walled room didn't tell me a fucking thing either. "I guess we start by walking around a bit, then. If this is a trap, we should figure it out soon enough." 

The ice archway opened onto an ice hallway, with more archways here and there opening onto other hallways and rooms, all alike: bleak, cold, and fucking empty. Not so much as a fucking ice golem minion anywhere. 

Then I caught sight of something on the other side of a wall. It was just a dark shadow that could have been a fucking snowman for all I could tell, but Val was at least able to confirm that it wasn't a figment of my imagination. So I blasted the wall, melting a large hole in the ice. 

In the middle of the explosive-type noises, I distinctly heard the tinkle of shattering china. 

"My, my. A good thing I had already re-routed the alarm system in this area. Are you certain you're not related to Lina Inverse, _Lord_ Gaav?" 

Only Xellos, I decided, could have made my title sound like an insult. And look so calm and casual, floating around in midair above the remains of a busted teacup right in front of a gigantic hole in the wall. 

"If I'd known it was you, I would have aimed more carefully," I growled. "What the fuck do you want?" 

"Now _that_ is a—" 

I shot forward through the hole in the wall before he could get the last word out, grabbed him by his shirt front and his upper arm, and yanked him up to my eye level. 

"If you're not willing to answer questions, you're of no fucking use to me, and you're too dangerous to leave at my back. Which means I leave a pile of grey dust behind in this room, not a live Mazoku." I smirked at him. 

Xellos' smile became edged, and his eyes slowly opened far enough that I could actually tell they were purple, instead of having to pull the information from my fucking unreliable memory. "Ah, yes. I forgot who I was dealing with for a moment." 

I shook him again. "Don't insult my intelligence. You're not that sloppy. Let's speed this up a bit. I already know you want me to kill Dynast—even that fucking dumb blonde swordsman Lina Inverse used to haul around could have gotten that by now. Too bad for you that I don't give a shit about your priorities. And if you don't tell me where Alya is _right now_ , I'm going to turn you into a dust pile. Or give you to Val for a bit, _then_ turn you into a dust pile," I added, noticing the gleam in my dragon's golden eyes. 

Val inclined his head. "Thank you, Lord Gaav. The Beast-Priest and I do have some unfinished business." He grabbed Xellos' wrist and drew the bastard's arm out straight, while the skin of his other hand rippled and darkened, claws sprouting from his fingertips. He tilted his head for a moment, then placed those claws just so. "Tell me, Xellos, does this bring back any memories?" 

Xellos jerked as the dragon talons sank into him. I tightened my grip so that he couldn't slip away. "Ah, yes, it does. Although I'm surprised you still hold a grudge over that after so many years." 

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Val said. His expression was a bit crazed, and I elbowed him in the arm, then shook my head when I caught his eye. He dipped his head in a sort of little half-bow and pulled his talons out of Xellos' arm. Black smoke bled off into the air, and his fingers twitched spasmodically several times before they returned to their human state. "There's no point in getting overeager, I suppose. After all, you might still decide to talk." 

Just what had Xellos done to make Val hate him so much? I could tell that whatever was between them went a long way beyond the nerve-grating irritation I felt when the other Mazoku was around. 

"Alya," I told Xellos, just in case he'd forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. "Now." And shook him one more time, for emphasis. 

"Of course I'll take you to your human pet. It won't do you any good, but that's hardly my fault." 

I growled wordlessly, and instead of just dropping the bastard, I threw him at the floor. I didn't hear any bones break—assuming he even had bones—but he bounced quite satisfyingly. Twice. But that fucking annoying smile of his stayed in place as he picked himself up and dusted himself off. He didn't seem to get frostbite, either. And his eyes had gone back to being just barely open. 

"This way, then," Xellos said, sounding entirely cheerful as he led us through an archway, along another corridor, around a couple of corners, and down the first staircase we'd seen. 

It was darker on the lower level, and the floors were stone rather than ice. Val muttered something about Dynast having rotten taste. 

"Do you really think so? I always thought that the lifelessness of it held a certain appeal, myself, although I prefer more chaotic surroundings. Most of the dragons I've known would find such an unchanging and orderly place quite pleasant." 

"Most of the dragons you've known were goldens," Val growled. "Which means they all had sticks wedged up their asses. And there's something you might want to remember, Xellos." 

"Oh? What's that?" 

"I'm not Filia. When I attack people, I don't miss." 

"Don't you? Ah, regardless of that, here we are!" Xellos stopped beside an archway and motioned us through. I grabbed him by the arm on my way past and dragged him along—if there was a trap here, he could fucking well endure it with the rest of us. 

The moment I got a good look at the room we'd just entered, I slammed the Beast-Priest up against the nearest wall. "What the fuck is this?" 

"Lord Dynast calls it . . . storage." 

I would have called it a fucking mortuary. Embedded into each wall and several ice pillars sticking up in the middle of the room were . . . people. Humans, mostly, but there were a few beastmen, a couple of trolls, and something I thought might be an elf. 

"She's _here_?!" I thundered at Xellos. "You fucking—" 

"Lord Gaav." Val's voice cut through mine even though he wasn't speaking all that loudly. "They're alive." 

"You're sure?" 

My dragon nodded. "They're deeply asleep, but I'm picking up some emotions—I think several of them are having nightmares." 

A deep chuckle rolled through the room . . . not coming from any of us. "I'm surprised you couldn't tell, _dear_ brother. Has that human body crippled you to the point that you've become as mind-blind as those sheep you seem so in love with? Phibrizzo was right, wasn't he—there's no way you could possibly be returned to your true self. Not anymore. Not that I would bother, anyway. The world will be easier to manage if there are fewer of us around to fight over the pieces." 

Xellos' smile changed subtly again, and I felt like I'd been whacked over the head with a telephone pole. 

This wasn't a setup to get me to kill Dynast, or at least not exactly. This was a setup to get us to kill _each other_ , if he could manage it. That would leave Xellos with only one Dark Lord to worry about. _And just how did he think Dynast was going to make me stay dead, if Hellmaster couldn't manage it?_

I shook my head. This wasn't the time to be asking myself about that. I needed to de-escalate this fast, if I could. I hated the idea of backing away from a fight, but dancing on Xellos' strings was worse. 

"I'm not here to fight you." Fuck, had I _ever_ tasted anything as bitter as those words? At least I'd made Xellos' eyes snap open again. "I just want my property back." I was going to stop there, but my mouth seemed to have linked up with my subconscious, because it kept right on running. "What the fuck's the matter with you, anyway? Did you forget there are _three_ Dragon Gods left? Things are just barely holding together right now because there're three of us, too. If one of us dies here, what do you think _they're_ going to do? They may be a bunch of self-righteous pricks, but they're not so stupid they can't take advantage of an opportunity that's staring them in the face. Break the stand-off, and Valwin might end up beating you to death with his fucking hat." Assuming Valwin really did have a hat, but the pictures I'd seen of him in his human form were all pretty consistent. As was the fuzzy memory that poked its head up for an instant before diving back down to the lower levels of my mind again. A fucking big conical straw hat. And a staff. 

"You . . ." Dynast's voice sounded . . . weird. If I was lucky, I might have gotten through to him. At the very least, I'd probably confused him. 

"The world's a big place, and I don't want all that much of it," I continued. "Plenty of space for you and Dolphin to divide up between you, if she's even interested." 

Dynast finally faded into view, over by the far wall. Well out of arm's reach, just in case, I guessed. 

"It's easy to forget that Ruby-Eye created you to do more than charge into battle at the head of our troops," the Ice King said with a twisted smile. "After all, you've always preferred to conceal your true abilities. A big, grumpy barbarian whose greatest joy in life is beating on things with his sword shouldn't have any skill at all as a strategist . . . but really, you're almost as dangerous as Xellos there, aren't you? He's just more obviously sneaky." 

_And what did Ruby-Eye make you for, I wonder?_ My spotty memory refused to supply the answer. I just hope it didn't end up being important. 

"And knowing that, I'd have to, as _you_ would say, be a fucking fool to let you run around loose. You can leave without the human girl . . . or trade your dragon for her, I suppose. He would be an equally effective hostage." Dynast chuckled. "The thought of using a hostage against you . . . the thought that you would _let_ yourself become so entangled with a soft, helpless prat of a human . . . it's hilarious, you know." 

"And if I actually believed you thought I'd let you hold onto anything of mine, I'd probably die laughing," I growled back. 

Dynast sighed and flipped the left side of his cloak back over his shoulder. There was a soft rasping noise as he drew the sword he'd been hiding underneath. "I suppose there's nothing more to say, then," he said, pointing the thing straight at me. 

"Not really," I said with a shrug, and then was forced to sway sideways, away from the pale blade that had almost driven into my shoulder. "Val! Now!" 

Metal skittered against metal as I pulled at a thin fold in space. The sight of Val using a broad-bladed spear with a nasty spiked counterweight to parry Dynast's sword registered for a split second. Then I was beside Xellos, my hands reaching out and tearing that fucking staff of his from his grip. I threw it across the room bottom-end first, and it embedded itself into the far wall with a crystalline shattering sound, narrowly missing Dynast's shoulder along the way. And with my other hand, I grabbed the Beast-Priest by the throat. 

"Any last words before I take you apart?" 

There was that annoying smile again. A human would have been choking, but the slimy cone didn't need to breathe. At least his eyes were open. 

"Do you want the girl back? No, of course you do. But you know, the stasis spell Dynast uses is heavily booby-trapped. Make one mistake in pulling it apart, and . . . boom!" Xellos made an eloquent exploding gesture. Which didn't seem at all like him, but then what the fuck did I know? 

"And I take it you know how to undo it." I snorted. The Beast-Priest was probably lying like a rug. The fact that I couldn't tell what piece of information he was leaving out for my benefit just made things more dangerous. 

"Well, I _did_ watch him cast it, but of course that's no guarantee! But I do know that delicate magics like that were never your best skill . . . even with your memory fully intact." 

"How long have you known?!" I snapped. 

"Mmm . . . that is a se—" 

I raised my free hand again and shot half a hundred little darts of red fire into his flesh. Blackness billowed from the holes they left. "If I hear the word 'secret' cross your lips, then this conversation is over and I'll take my chances with the fucking stasis spell. And dump your dust into the Municipality of Sairaag's main sewer system when I'm done with you." 

Xellos forced out a laugh. "Your brutality is showing, _Lord_ Gaav. As it happens, I didn't even guess until I overheard your conversation with Valgaav when you first arrived. You do tend to have a certain low cunning with respect to such things." 

More sounds of metal crashing against metal. Val made a hissing noise and swore, and I smelled a hint of copper . . . blood? 

"I don't have any more time to waste on you," I snarled at Xellos. "Stay where you are, or I'll think of something even worse to do with you than dumping you down a sewer—chimerizing you with some airheaded human girl might be good for a laugh." 

"Are you claiming that the girl you're going to so much trouble to recover is—" 

This time, when my hand rose, my power blasted a hole the size of a dinner plate right through the Beast-Priest, left of center and just above his hip, nearly breaking him into two pieces. I added a couple of smaller holes in strategic locations before tossing him aside and redirecting my attention toward Val's duel with Dynast. 

My dragon had bared his teeth and was growling almost steadily as their weapons clashed, broke apart, and clashed again. The sleeve of his jacket had been cut open, and there was blood trickling down the arm underneath, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been afraid it might be. And although he hadn't managed to put any scratches on Dynast, he _had_ managed to give the other Mazoku a haircut, shearing off part of the Ice King's black mane just above shoulder level. They were both flickering fast, phasing in and out and attacking each other with magic as well as their weapons. Turning and turning and . . . now! 

I grabbed the unshorn part of Dynast's hair, using it to swing him around and slam him to the floor. Val grinned savagely, spun his spear, and plunged it into Dynast's shoulder, making the Dark Lord convulse. 

"I want him alive," I warned my dragon. _At least until I figure out how much of what I was spouting about balance and the Dragon Gods is actually true._

Val nodded and let go of the spear, leaving it standing upright in Dynast's shoulder. "I'll keep an eye on Xellos, then, while you decide what you want done with them." 

I nodded, then wrapped my hand around the haft of the spear and wiggled it a bit. Dynast's breath hissed through his teeth. His reactions were, in an odd way, almost too human. 

"You know what I came here for," I told him. "Give it to me, and I'll go." 

Dynast gave me an off-kilter smirk. "Fine, then. Take it!" 

_Splash!_

"Fuck!" I snarled as the walls and pillars in the room all turned into ice water. Okay, so it had probably freed Alya, but it had also freed everyone else in "storage" and left the room knee-deep—knee-deep on _me_ , that was—in fucking cold water that flooded my boots and soaked into my coat. And just to add to the fun, although the room was at least six feet wider and longer, the walls were _still_ made of ice, and where the water touched them, it was beginning to freeze over again. Some of it was running out into the hallway, too, but not nearly fast enough. Most of the people who had been in "storage" had fallen to their knees as the ice released them, made some _glub-glub_ noises, and staggered to their feet again. 

I looked for Alya and found that Val had hauled her upright, and was currently standing with his arm around her. She looked dazed, but unhurt. 

Val's other hand had sprouted dragon talons from the fingertips again, although only the one at the end of the little finger was actually visible. The rest were embedded in Xellos' upper arm. Apparently my dragon had decided to do a little more than just keep an eye on the Beast-Priest. I didn't blame him one bit. 

"You! Die, Mazoku!" 

I leaned to the left, acting on reflexes and instinct again, and a bolt of yellow light sizzled past my ear, close enough to leave a stinging trace on my skin. And I was hearing swords being drawn and a couple of people mumbling to themselves. Just great. 

I still had my hand on Val's spear, so I yanked it out of Dynast and used it to parry a descending sword. My power flexed and surged, and I flipped my left hand in a negligent gesture, sending several of the confused strangers flying. Why the fuck hadn't Dynast taken their toys away before tossing them in the deep freeze? For that matter, where the fuck _was_ Dynast? I couldn't see his shadow under the water anymore. Probably he'd made a beeline for the astral as soon as I'd pulled the fucking spear out of him. 

"L-lord Gaav—" 

My head whipped around for another look at Val and Alya . . . and my blood instantly ran cold. 

Alya, eyes still glazed, had a knife in her hand. 

The point of it was pressed against Val's neck, firmly enough to break the skin and send a trickle of blood running down. He looked horrified. 

"I did _try_ to warn you," Xellos sang out, his grin close to maniacal. 

"Shit the fuck up," I snarled. 

I had only seconds to do something in. Before Val had to decide whether to save Alya or himself. Dynast—or Xellos—had to have chosen the knife with the intent of having Alya use it on me, so it wasn't likely that my poor dragon would survive being stabbed. Or he might be stabbed in the back by one of the other random people in the room—probably the blonde maybe-elf, who seemed to have some idea of what we were. 

We could probably neutralize Alya for a while, by breaking both her arms if nothing else . . . but the idea made me feel sick for what might be the first time ever in my life, and depending on what Dynast had done to her she might try to fight anyway and end up damaging her body beyond repair. I didn't know enough. Didn't know if there was any way to snap her out of it. Didn't dare apply my power instinctively and hope for the best, because it might kill her. 

I'd gotten this far acting in ignorance, but it looked like I'd just run out of luck. This wasn't something I could deal with using weapons, my fists, uncontrolled Mazoku power, and a lot of yelling and bad language. If I wanted to save them both, if they could both be saved, there was only one thing I could think of that might give me a chance. 

Since Dynast wasn't around, I stabbed Val's spear through Xellos' shoulder and into the wall to make sure the fucking cone didn't go anywhere I didn't want him to. Then I reached back. 

The hilt of the sword was warm and familiar in my hand, and my fingers closed smoothly around it in a firm grip. 

_Don't think,_ I told myself. _Just do it._

I shifted my stance, dropping my left shoulder. For a moment, all that happened was that the blade rasped slightly as I pulled it from the scabbard. 

Then the inside of my head exploded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably not the climactic confrontation anyone was expecting. Including me when I wrote it, but the characters refused to handle it any other way. Sigh. I even get bullied by figments of my imagination.
> 
> And yes, I'm afraid Xellos getting his catchphrase interrupted turned into a bit of a running gag, or something.


	21. The Counterfeit Self

— _first instant of independent awareness has me crouched, belly to the ground, in front of a giant, grotesque creature that has even more heads than I do._

_Heads?_

_How many heads do I have?_

_For that matter, what am I? I can feel the bond between me and the fucking ugly bastard I'm staring at, but I can also tell that my body is red, and his is dark._

_His? Well, of course. He, him, his, himself. I'm male too. Or at least, I feel like I should be._

_"Gaav."_

_A name. My name? I think so. It'll do for now, anyway._

_"General of my armies."_

_Yeah, that does feel like my purpose_ — 

Thousands of battles. Thousands of years. All blending together in my mind and memory. Some of the battles end in success and satisfaction, others in failure and irritation, but otherwise there's very little to distinguish between them. 

— _purple-eyed freak she made for herself is staring at me. Something about him makes my tail lash and the back of my neck tingle. He's barely a month old, and yet there's something wrong with him. I can sense it even if she can't._

_It's weird, though. Zelas used to be the most perceptive of us, but when it comes to this pet of hers, she acts as fucking thick-headed as Dynast_ — 

I always hated Xellos. Always. Not that there were ever a hell of a lot of people I respected. Not even Ruby-Eye. 

— _runs his hand up and down the length of the Staff of Bone, his favourite new toy, designed specifically to give his human form a boost. We're all in our human forms too, clustered around him. I'm the only one who's taller than him. What a weird feeling._

_"No, Gaav is the one who will come with me, while the rest of you hold the barrier. Of all of you, he is the one I spawned with direct confrontations in mind."_

_Spawned. Like a fucking jellyfish. I'd probably be pissed off at that if Dear Old Dad hadn't just offered me the chance to kill something_ — 

And then everything changed. 

— _as I shake two of my heads and climb slowly to my feet._

_"I am not Lord Ceiphied, and I can't seal you as effectively as he did your progenitor."_

_"Shut the fuck up and_ fight _," I snarl, and bite a chunk out of her shoulder with the least battered of my heads. It won't be long now. Ragradia's hide looks like a sieve, all full of leaky holes. She can't have much astral substance left. I'm at least going to take_ her _down, now that the battle's turned into a clusterfuck and she's made an ice statue out of Lord Ruby-Eye._

_She gives me a dragon smile, standing there with her wings spread and her chest exposed. "Golden King, Mother of All, whose will ripples across the Sea of Chaos . . ."_

_There's more. A lot more. But I can't concentrate, can't hold on to the words, as a wind full of golden glitter rises around me. A little round nodule that doesn't belong there is being pushed inside my astral body, and I roar with pain and disgust at the violation, my voice thundering out over the ice even though there's no one left to hear it but the two of us_ — 

— _no idea where the fuck I am. I've been throwing myself at the walls of that prison, half-mad with confinement, for what seems like forever, and now my head hurts like someone just worked it over with a fucking hammer._

_. . . I think this is a cave. Somewhere in the middle of a range of rolling green-grey hills. I'm naked, lying in the middle of a meagre pile of rags. There's a backpack with busted straps sitting on a rock beside me, and an empty canteen. When I reach up to touch my aching head, my hair turns out to be matted with crusty gunk, and there's something wet on my fingertips. Wet and red._

_Mortal blood. I stare at it, hating, then call out my power and use it to rid myself of the filth. The ache in my head is slowly fading, and I can't find any more blood in my now-clean hair, so I guess the pain is just some kind of residual shit left over from healing whatever hole I had in my body._

_Now what? I don't have any chance of getting revenge on Ragradia. Her dead body flopping down on top of me is just about the last thing I remember before that prison. How long was I in there? It's easy to lose all sense of time when the only things you can see around you are curved silver walls . . ._

_I scowl, realizing that I need more information. There are still half a hundred little threads lodged in me, subtle connections linking me to the lesser Mazoku who serve me. There should be ten times that many, but the important ones are still there._

_I think I've been gone for a while._

_I wave my hand, summoning familiar clothes, and then crawl out of the cave, because the ceiling's too low for me to stand up. The skirts of my coat get in the way, and I snarl at nothing._

_Outside, I'm able to stagger to my feet. Crabgrass and heather, the dullness of an overcast day, and no humans close enough for me to feed on . . . I must really be at the ass-end of nowhere._

_"Raltaak!" I pluck on the linking thread as I speak my Priest's name to the open air, and he responds to the summons immediately, appearing in front of me._

_"Lord Gaav, you're—" I think he's blinking with surprise, but his eyebrows are so thick I can't see his eyes any more than I can usually see those of Zelas' fucking pet cone._

_"Shut up and tell me what's been going on_ — 

I don't think anything really was all that different at that point. Not yet. But the seeds were planted. 

— _tension's flowing out of him now. I don't think he's more than half-conscious. I guess he burned up all his energy trying not to die. Stubborn little dragon. It worked out well for him this time, but I'm going to have to keep an eye on him. Just in case he takes that stubbornness to the next level and doesn't retreat when he should. Not that I'm always that fucking good at that either, I know. Loving to fight makes it easy to get carried away._

_He's still leaning against me, with the side of his face against my shoulder. Weird, how that warm weight actually feels good. I even want to put my arms around him, now that I've pulled the sword out. I don't know why. It just feels . . . right._

_He's shaking. I think it's shock, or something like that, from the power still raging crazily inside him. Ceiphied and Shabranigdo are duking it out inside his body, poor bastard. Even I'd have problems handling that for long. Since I'm here to reinforce it, the dark power will win sooner or later, but it's going to be a while before he's good for much._

_We need to get out of this desert. I'm not worried about those fucking stupid goldens turning up again any time soon, but I let loose my power to save Val, and Phibby might have picked up on it even in those few seconds and realized that I've been hiding right under his nose ever since I offed his General. Under those circumstances, I might as well take the little dragon home with me, and worry about the attack from Phibby's forces when and if it comes._

_I pull Val tighter against me and fold space around the two of us, aiming at an empty stone room. There are enough of them here, given how many of my followers deserted while I was under Ragradia's fucking seal, but this is the one right beside mine. One of the ones I kicked a lesser Mazoku out of to ensure my privacy. I'm still stuck with this fucking human body, and no matter how much I improve it, it still needs to eat and sleep and I don't want any of them to know. They'd probably desert if they found out._

_Val's different, though. He has a physical body too, not just an astral form. Chances are that it won't even occur to him that needing to fuel his body or being unconscious for six hours in the average day could be seen as weaknesses._

_I make a broad gesture, creating a bed in one corner. He can make whatever other furniture he wants when he's feeling a bit better. It should be easy for him. An ancient dragon's body has a lot of capacity. Once his power settles, he's going to be strong._

_Another flick cleans off all the sand and sweat and blood, and he sighs with relief. He's able to shuffle his way over to the bed, leaning against me, and I turn back the blankets and help him into it._

_. . . I don't know why I'm bothering. Sleeping on the floor with sand matted into his hair wouldn't actually hurt him, but something inside me wants to treat him well. I even find myself brushing a lock of silky aqua hair out of his face, making his eyes flick open and blink owlishly at me. They're a bit glazed, but it's clear that he sees me, because he smiles crookedly, and I find myself smiling back._

_"Lord . . . Gaav . . ."_

_"Go to sleep," I tell him, still not understanding why it matters. Why_ he _matters._

_"Mmh . . ." His eyes slide shut again, and I stay there watching_ — 

That was the real beginning of change, even if it took me decades to realize it. 

— _rakes the point of the spear along Rashatt's belly as he side-steps. Black smoke billows out for a moment before my idiot General can plug the hole in his astral body._

_Val smirks. There's red mortal blood running down the side of his neck, but he clearly doesn't give a shit. The spear spins gracefully in his hands. Three years ago, he'd never even held one, or any other weapon, and now he's fighting one of the most powerful Mazoku in the world to a standstill with it. And Rashatt is no slouch. After all, he's a fragment of me, so he knows just about everything that I do about weapons._

_Val's naturally gifted, of course, but he's also stubborn and determined, practicing twelve hours a day when I don't have anything better for him to do. Beating the feel of that spear, of holding it and using it, into his body. I won't say that he acts like it's an extension of his arms . . . but I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time._

_Sure enough, he's drawn blood again. Just a glancing blow, not enough to stop Rashatt, but it's still impressive. If they continue the match until they can't, and neither of them fucks up, they're going to tear each other to ribbons. Too bad I can't afford that._

_"That's enough, you two," I bark, and they both step back and disengage. They're both hot-blooded fighters, but thankfully not out of control. "Rashatt, have you practiced at_ all _in the past year or so? Because you seem to be getting fucking lazy. Valgaav, you're coming along well, but you need to work on your defense. Winning the fight doesn't do you any good if you get pounded to shit along the way."_

_Rashatt scowls, gives me a quick bow, and disappears. Val looks at me with burning eyes. He's surprised, although I'm not sure why. Does he just not know how skilled he's gotten? Come to think of it, Rashatt was the one to challenge him, not the other way around._

_Well, the little dragon I pulled from the desert sands is becoming something extraordinary. It isn't surprising that Rashatt's jealous. I designed him to be a strong arm, not a big brain, but Val's capable of being both. And he still makes me feel warm inside. Fucking weird, but I can't see myself giving that up._

_I clap him on the shoulder and give him a grin as I pass by him, and he grins back at me. It's a fierce kind of smile, but it kind of surprises me that he_ can _smile, that there's still something in his life that can make him happy_ — 

Humans—hell, most of the mortal species—think that Mazoku are emotionally crippled, that there're some things we just can't feel. In my experience, it isn't quite like that. It's more like we're emotionally stunted. Ruby-Eye isn't the sensitive type, and we all spent the earliest parts of our lives as pieces of him. 

Raise a human kid in surroundings that shitty and you'd probably get the kind of ravening berserker that licks his sword just before he tries to stab you. But one in a hundred of those kids might turn things around and become a functioning member of society—or whatever the fuck they're calling it these days—if he has a good enough reason to try. 

— _standing in the middle of an empty battlefield littered with corpses. Humans from the kingdom with that idiotic kissing custom, and orcs and trolls sent by Phibby, all stacked in piles and drifts. I have to pay close attention to tell big orcs from small humans, or small trolls from big humans, with the way they're all jumbled together. The whole place stinks of blood and shit and metal and just a bit of Fireball-cooked meat, but that's normal._

_I belch as I wipe my sword clean and put it back in the scabbard. Hopefully none of the live humans noticed. There was a lot of anger and hatred and fear and tasty, tasty bloodlust floating around while we were fighting, and I'm so stuffed I feel like I'm going to split open._

_They're regrouping in the little valley where they set up their encampment, but I doubt we'll be seeing many more enemies for a while._

_. . . Funny. It doesn't feel like Val's with them. He's over on my left somewhere. He ran off after the last batch of trolls. Is he still chasing them? If so, I should probably give him a hand._

_I keep my power drawn in close as I reach out and snag a fold of space, since I don't want to announce myself to every other Mazoku within a hundred miles. I come out on the side of a small, sheltered valley, standing on a low boulder and surrounded by bushes. There are two dead trolls at the bottom of the ravine, and Val is in a half-hidden little hollow over . . ._

_What the_ fuck _?_

_Val's leaning against a boulder with his head thrown back, his eyes closed, his pants pulled down around his thighs, and his hand stroking his crotch. He's got his emotions drawn in tightly, but from time to time I catch a faint flavour of lust and shame. Now that I think about it, most of the dragon races think jerking off is an offense against Ceiphied, or some fucking nonsense like that._

_He groans softly, and I lick my lips. My mouth's suddenly gone dry, and there's a weird tension running through my body, just from watching him. That's been happening, on and off, since I had to kiss him at that fucking festival, but never this strongly before. I want to taste his mouth again, and tear the rest of his clothes off and . . ._

_Oh,_ fuck _. I get it now. This fucking stupid body . . . Mazoku don't have a sex drive, normally. After all, what would we do with one? This is the first time I've ever had a spontaneous hard-on, and it aches and feels_ so _good, both at the same time._

_I want him, and I can't have him, because I'm pretty sure he'd see it as a violation of trust. He might . . . it wouldn't be unthinkable for him to break away. I'd lose him, and end up wasting all the resources I've already poured into him. I'd lose the warmth he makes me feel just by being there, and the thought almost makes me start hitting the nearest rock until my knuckles are bloody and the stone turns to dust._

_Whose face is he seeing, in his mind's eye? The same one he focused on while I was kissing him? Male or female, dragon or human?_

_If I ever find that person, I think I'm going to turn them into meat paste. Just the thought of them makes a dull pain build behind my breastbone at the same time as it sets my blood on fire, but that's nothing like imagining someone else touching my little dragon._

Val . . . 

_His lips part again on a soft gasp. "L-lord Gaav . . . please, just a little more . . . I'm almost there . . ."_

_And it's like the world just stopped turning._

Crazy dragon . . . you really want . . .

_I grab a tiny fold in space, only a wrinkle, and pull myself out beside him. Val's eyes snap open wide as he senses me, since I can't hide from him when we're this close together. Longing-lust-shame-fear . . . he can't hide from me, either._

_He knows he can't run, and stands paralyzed against the rock as I reach out and touch his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone, running the ball of my thumb over his lower lip. His pupils are blown so wide they almost look round as he stares up at me._

_"Lord Gaav . . . this isn't . . ."_

_"Isn't what I think it is? Is that what you were going to say? I've told you before that I don't appreciate it when people lie to me, Val. Are you trying to make me angry?" But I stroke his skin again, trying to reassure him._

_"N-no. I'm sorry. This is_ exactly _what you think it is."_

_Mostly fear, now. That wasn't what I wanted. "Silly little dragon. Did you think I'd be offended?"_

_"You're not?"_

_"Why would I be?" I reach down and put my hand over the one frozen at his crotch, and the noise he makes is almost a whine. "You haven't done anything wrong."_

_"That doesn't always stop you," he gasps. His hips are starting to work again, pushing his cock forward into my grip and his. I don't think he can help himself._

_"True." I smirk. Then I lean down and kiss the corner of his mouth._

_The cry of a mating dragon echoes through the little valley, and I hear the liquid sound of droplets spattering against my coat to be lost among all the other smears that currently decorate it._

_"We need to talk," I say when he's finally caught his breath. "But not right now. Tonight, at home." When we were behind several layers of warding and couldn't be overheard, especially from the astral. Zelas' fucking sneaky cone could be three feet from us right now staring at Val's cock, for all I know._

_Val's still a bit afraid, but he's also hopeful and intrigued. Good. I gesture for him to follow_ — 

— _just heard the second and third watches exchange places when he ducks inside my tent that night and stands there expectantly. I take my time, finishing the message I'm writing before standing up, since I'd have to finish the fucking thing anyway . . . and it gives me the illusion I'm still in control of something here, even though I know that control's pretty fucking fragile._

_Val offers me a nervous smile as I create an illusion of me asleep at the low table I've been using as a desk. Leaving that and the light spell and an alarm ward that should tell me if anyone's trying to get into the tent, I beckon my dragon closer. And then I take us home._

_The big stone room's much quieter than the human encampment, and much more comfortable. I go over to the cabinet on the wall and rummage for a moment until I find the open bottle of brandy and two glasses. Enough to relax us a bit, but there wasn't enough left to get either of us really sloshed._

_"Sit down," I order Val, waving my hand toward the table and its flanking overstuffed chairs, and he obediently takes the one further from the seldom-used door. His chair. The one he sat in while I taught him to play chess. When I hand him his glass, he sips from it slowly, staring down into it while I grope for words._ Shit, this is hard.

_"I meant it when I said I wasn't offended," is what I come up with at last. At least it's a place to start._

_"That doesn't mean you think it was appropriate," Val mutters at his drink. Then, "You're going to send me away, aren't you?"_

_I don't have much brandy in my mouth, but what I do have gets sprayed all over the table. "_ Hell _, no. Stupid dragon. Where would you get an idea like that?"_

_"Well, I thought . . . it must be embarrassing . . . to know that every time I look at you, I can't help thinking about . . ." He's blushing. I've never seen him do that before. It's . . . cute._

_I snort. "It's pretty fucking difficult to embarrass me, Val. In fact, I'm not sure it's ever happened." I give that a couple of seconds to sink in, swirling my glass. "What I want to know is . . . why? Why, out of everyone in the world, would you pick me?" If I were talking to anyone else, I'd just assume it was misplaced gratitude, but my little dragon was too smart for that._

_"I didn't exactly do it consciously . . . but I'll try to explain the parts that I understand."_

_There's a long pause, but then I knew this was going to be difficult for him, so I don't try to push. Instead, I analyze the whisps of emotion coming off him. Fear, still, but more hope, and an intense lust that floods him every time he glances in my direction. Which makes me want to rip his shirt off . . . but I need to understand this right now, not allow myself to be carried away on a tide of fucking body-impulses._

_Maybe his explanation will help me sort out how_ I _feel. I want . . . I want so fucking badly . . . and I don't understand why._

_I hate this human shit._

_Val's hand presses against his chest, over the scar where I ran him through that first night._

_"When you found me, I was living in the middle of a nightmare," he says slowly. "What the goldens did turned my world upside-down. I'd never been that angry before, never hated anyone . . . I'd been taught ever since I hatched that it was wrong to hate. And then there you were, holding out your hand to me. Offering me revenge. Like it was perfectly normal to feel the way I felt. And when I staggered against you . . . you could have dropped me, but you held me up, and even when you ran your sword through me, I felt . . . accepted. Safe, even. The nightmare was over, and I'd woken up."_

_I don't protest, just wait as he empties half of his glass in one gulp. If I push his thoughts off-course now, I may never get any answers at all._

_"You've always been so patient. Kind, even, in your own way. I remember . . . the first time I killed someone . . . A full Mazoku wouldn't have been sick at all, but you waited until I was ready to go on. When Rashatt said I was weak, you punched him so hard he left a ten-foot-deep hole in a granite cliff. You didn't just put my first practice weapon in my hands, you taught me how to use it, drilling me over and over again until I got it right, even though you must have been bored out of your mind. You even keep telling me that I have a talent for that, for fighting. Did you know that I've never been_ good _at anything before? Or at least, not anything that mattered."_

_He stares at the palm of his right hand for a moment. It was soft when I found him in the desert. There are bands of callus there now, marking what he's learned . . . His hands are still more finely-shaped than mine, though. His body is such a subtle, perfect blend of strength and elegance . . ._

_Fuck. Fuck. But I still can't stop myself from staring at him, at the horn and the scars and the fine-boned face and the sleekly-muscled, well-proportioned body . . ._

_"I've known for a while now that I thought of you as more than just my master, or my teacher, or even my brother in arms, but I couldn't make any sense of it until you kissed me during that stupid ceremony and it was like half a mountain had fallen on my head." His smile is tentative, and he's wondering, hoping . . . wanting. Lusting. After me._

_"I think I got the other half of that mountain," I grumble at my brandy, and Val snorts, eyes lighting with a sudden surge of hope. "Thinking of you touching, of you_ wanting _anyone else makes me so pissed off I can't see straight. I just hope you weren't expecting romance, or any of that crap. You know I'm not good to it."_

_"With all the important stuff you've given me, starting with my_ life _, why the fuck would I want flowers or candy?" Val's voice is soft and husky. He throws back his head and gulps down the rest of the brandy. "Wanting you means wanting_ you _, as you are, not some fantasy hybrid of you and . . . and . . . fuck, I don't even know what I'd use for the other half."_

_"I've got enough bits I don't want and didn't ask for hanging off me without adding hypothetical ones." I toss back my own brandy, what's left of it, and get up out of my chair. Then I hold out my hand to him, and he takes it and lets me pull him up and guide him over to the bed, a big messy unmade pile of furs and random blankets over a magic-stuffed mattress._

_And then finally I let myself give in and push him down and kiss him the way I've been dreaming of doing for nearly a month now, and he starts making hungry noises as I slide my tongue between his lips, and wraps his arms around my neck. The pressure between my legs is getting to the point where it's almost painful._

_I'm not a virgin, but I've never felt like this before, either. Sex is a tool for Mazoku, one that we use sparingly, because it produces emotions we can't feed on—sometimes even ones that repel us. A normal physical projection doesn't experience pleasure through touch, and without that sex is mostly just body fluids being passed back and forth. Irrelevant. I've assembled entire battle plans in my head while I was banging some nutcase of a human prince who had a fetish for big, dominant redheads, back before the Kouma War. Wanting someone like this, physically, is a new experience, too overwhelming to be pleasant. I have to . . . have to . . . My power chars our clothes to ashes because the need to feel Val's skin against mine is so fucking intense that it's taking over my mind. And he seems just as eager and out of control as I am, crazy dragon, writhing underneath me, finding my mouth with his again and again . . ._

_It's the sting of his talons digging into me that finally gives me a bit of my control back. Even then, I can't pull away, not when he's holding on to me with both arms and both legs. I don't want to, anyway. Never again, if I can help it. But I can't just take him dry, either. If I tear him up, he might never let me do this again. And I want to. I want to do it over and over and over._

_I nip his ear and say, "Do you think you can let go of me for a bit and roll over? This next bit'll be easier if you're on your stomach."_

_"If you . . . want me to . . ." He's panting, and the pupils of his golden eyes are blown wide again. Slowly, he disengages himself one limb at a time and repositions himself on the bed._

_I gather the globes of his ass in my hands and separate them gently, my thumbs stroking up and down the crack. That prince with the redhead fetish was obsessive enough to have tested several hundred kinds of lube, and I invoke memory and coat my fingers with a layer of slippery gel._

_Val's breath hitches as I slide my little finger inside him._

_"Try to relax," I advise him, and he nods, his horn rubbing against the haphazard pile of furs pillowing his head. I'm not going to tell him that I've never done a virgin before. There's no way that fucking a female dragon or two would have prepared him for this. He seems to want it, though, from the way his body's clutching loosely at my finger. And he doesn't make one sound of protest._

_I guess I find exactly the right spot as I push a second finger into him, because he vents a low moan and tries to push himself back onto my hand. I let him, up to a point._

_I've just gotten the third finger in when he finally speaks up. "Lord Gaav, please, don't make me wait any longer! F-fuck me!" He blushes as he stutters over a word that he's never_ meant _before, not really, even if he's said it a few times._

_"Begging? That isn't like you, little dragon. You know it's dangerous."_

_"Right now I don't care! I . . . I need . . ." He's shaking, and I stroke his lower back, trying to calm him._

_"All right," I tell him, pulling my fingers from his body. "Spread your legs a bit more . . . yes, like that." I'm shaking too. It's taking everything in me to keep from just plunging into him, to make sure my cock is slick before I begin to push inside him. He's moaning, digging his taloned hands into the bedding, pushing back in tiny jerks and radiating lust and pure sensory pleasure with more intensity than I've ever felt from anyone. I figure I must be doing the same, although without the grace-notes of pain that spangle his emotions. I bow forward a bit, letting my loose hair (when the fuck did I lose my hair-ring?) cascade forward over his back, and he keens, one hand shakily reaching back so that he can run his talons through the blood red._

_And then I'm fully inside and . . . he's hot, and tight, and . . . emotions cascading over me in waves . . . his, mine, I can't fucking tell . . ._

_"I can't go slowly anymore," I warn him, and somehow my voice doesn't crack. That's all I can manage before I pull out and plunge in again, and he's panting and moaning and writhing and feeding me his emotions all at the same time, and I'm fucking him roughly because I just can't stop myself, and then the muscles of his back ripple as his mating cry nearly blasts my ears out and I have to duck to one side to avoid getting a faceful of black, feathery wings as his body squeezes my cock and . . ._

_Fuck, is_ this _what an orgasm feels like to a human? Total, intense pleasure, starting between my legs and spreading up through my body, until I can't even think about anything else . . . no wonder sex seems to make humans go temporarily crazy. And dragons. And just about every other physical creature of any size or complexity._

_It's ten minutes before I can do more than vacantly stare at him, and now we're both sweaty and sated and . . . kind of stuck together, still, until I pull out and separate us. Val's wings are twitching weakly, but he can't seem to get them to fold properly._

_"Leave them out, unless it's uncomfortable," I tell him, running my hand lightly over feathers._

_"I would have thought you wouldn't want to be reminded of what I used to be," he says, rolling over onto his side. "Mmph. Should get up . . . I guess . . ."_

_"Stay," I tell him, lying down beside him, letting him snuggle against me while I continue to stroke his wings. "What you were is part of what you are. I'd be a total fucking hypocrite if I asked you to just throw your past away. Little dragon. I don't want some half-assed fantasy hybrid version of you, either."_

_"You aren't . . . going to leave me, are you?"_

_"Never." I don't often keep my promises, I admit, but this one, I intend to. I want to._

_"Good, because . . . I don't think I care that much about revenge anymore. I just wanna be here, like this. With you." His breathing smoothes out and I think he's_ — 

My dragon's always been the one _good_ thing that happened to me since Ragradia stuck me with this stupid body and parasitic soul. 

I should have known better than to promise him anything. 

— _fucking Ragna Blade of hers did more than sting the way Ruby-Eye's spell does. It made a good-sized hole in my astral body, my_ real _body, and I can feel my strength leaking away, like a human with a bleeding wound. I was playing with her, trying to understand what the fuck Phibby wants her for, but I'm going to have to leave my curiosity unsatisfied and just get rid of her._

_Out of the corner of my eye, a flicker of movement. Xellos? What the fuck is he doing?_

_The sudden burst of agony runs straight through my body from back to chest. Someone's just fucking ambushed me on the astral, and my attention snaps over to that side entirely, a roar of rage and pain erupting from two of my throats, while my central head whips around, seeking an opponent._

_I don't have to look far._

_Phibby's fucking grinning at me as he floats level with my head. Not that any mortal creature would recognize it as a grin, but I've had a lot of practice._

_He's talking at me, but I mostly ignore him. I know how this is going to end. We never really got along from the beginning. So I turn my attention inward instead of outward, plucking on one particular connecting thread._

Val . . . no, don't come here. Phibrizzo is here, and Xellos, and Lina Inverse. I won't risk you too. I may not be able to get back to you for a while, little dragon. I . . . think I might have fucked up pretty badly this time. While I'm . . . away, I'm trusting you to take care of my interests. Here, take everything you can of me. I'm past the point where power is going to do me any good here. 

_I pour my power along the link as I sink down toward the darkness, until the contact between us is cut off. When I died the first time, under Ragradia's fucking carcass, I was so pissed off I barely even noticed the pain of being squashed, and I'm certainly angry enough this time too, but there's something else there, too, something leaden and grey that saps the strength from my bones._

So that's what grief feels like from the inside, _is my last thought_ — 

I always thought Phibby had the brains of a fucking sea squirt, and that death of mine proved it. Hellmaster was supposed to have authority over souls, or so he always claimed, so how the fuck had he forgotten that I had one? Or did he just not care? After all, if he'd succeeded in tipping the world back into the Sea of Chaos, I wouldn't have had anywhere to return _to_. 

Good thing he fucked up. And a good thing that Val fucked up too, even if I'm never going to tell him so. I hadn't realized how my death would affect him. Rage and pain, yes, I'd been expecting those, but not madness and despair. My poor little dragon. He deserved so much better than what I could give him . . . but even when he was given the opportunity to start over, he chose me again without a second thought. 

— _staring sleepily at his hands as he lies in the crook of my arm on a rented bed barely big enough for the two of us. There's blood on his lower lip. He bit it through, trying not to scream as my power flowed into him. Since it was the second time, we both knew what to expect, more or less, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt._

_"Regrets?" I ask, nudging him. Not that there's any going back now, but I'm curious._

_Val snorts. "Not a chance. I've spent years, now, denying my past, or trying to. No more. The place I chose for myself was by your side, Lord Gaav, and I'm never going to leave it again." He smiles sweetly, eyes falling shut, and I kiss the inflamed skin at the base of his regrown horn as he whispers, "S'good to be home_ — 

I don't know if it was Ragradia or someone or something else that prepared these fucking little lessons for me, explorations of concepts that Mazoku never bother with. Sometimes I suspect that the Mother of All chose them herself. Either way, I've learned _love_ and _home_ . . . and _grief_ and _guilt_ , too, no matter how pissed off I was at having those stuffed under my nose. 

This time, the lesson seemed to be _family_. 

Not more than a split second had gone by while the tidal wave of memory washed over me. Val was still standing, tense, with Alya holding a knife to his throat, Xellos was pinned to the wall by Val's spear, and a bunch of other people, including the golden dragon I'd thought was an elf, were scattered around the perimeter of the room. And my boots were still full of cold water, thanks to fucking Dynast. 

My poor dragon was frantic, the familiar richness of his emotions easy to tease apart from the confusion and anger of the others, even the other dragon. Alya was radiating an odd kind of low-key terror. _Trapped in a nightmare,_ I thought. Stolen, trapped, and tortured, and how _dare_ fucking Dynast do such a thing to someone who belonged to me? I growled, very, very softly. 

Only an idiot tampers with a dragon's hoard. 

The spells clinging to Alya were fucking complicated, glistening on the astral like fine blue wire. No way was I going to try to untangle that mess, bit by careful bit. Easier just to dissolve it. 

I pushed the other ex-prisoners away, up against the walls, then adjusted my sword to a more comfortable position, leaning against my shoulder—with a little luck, I wasn't going to need it. Then I raised my left hand, cupped palm upward, defined an area in my mind, and called to myself all the energy within that area that matched Dynast's signature. 

It felt like drinking liquid nitrogen, burning cold, but I gritted my teeth and kept pulling it in, telling myself I'd get a hot shower when this was over. With Val. Yeah, that would be good. 

Collecting _all_ of Dynast's power in the area meant that, as well as pulling off the spell clinging to Alya, I melted even more of the walls and part of the ceiling—Xellos nearly got brained by a falling end table. Served the little bastard right, as far as I was concerned. Other furniture splashed down in the mess and either melted or splintered, depending on what it was made of. At least the falling objects were keeping Dynast's other prisoners at the far end of the room. 

I stopped when Alya blinked and dropped the knife—the longest two seconds of my fucking life, including the ones right after Phibby had run me through, all those years ago. I had a big ball of blue-white energy hovering above the palm of my hand, and considered it as Val teleported Alya and himself out of the way of a falling grand piano (why the fuck had Dynast wanted one of _those_? Dolphin was the only one of us with any kind of musical talent.) 

"Dad? Are you . . . okay?" Alya grabbed the skirts of my coat as Val let go of her. 

"I'm fine, brat. My hands are a little full right now, though." I bounced the ball of energy I was holding. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Val grab Xellos, who had been trying to sneak away now that the wall he'd been pinned to was melted, and plant his foot securely on the slimy little cone's back. That put Xellos' head underwater. He turned out to know a lot of variations on _Glub, glub!_ "What do _you_ think I should do with this?" I asked Alya. 

She wrinkled her nose. "Hmm. Well, I don't know what it's actually _good_ for, but when's the last time you gave Uncle Dynast a birthday present?" 

I laughed. _"Uncle Dynast"—oh, fuck, wouldn't he hate that!_ "Sometime during the Kouma War, I think. Although his actual birthday's the day after Cephiedmas. Hmm." I bounced the energy ball again, then manipulated it a bit before tossing it up through the hole in the ceiling, where it exploded, leaving brightly-coloured traceries on the walls. 

Val looked up and started to laugh, too. "Cephiedmas decorations? I think that may be the most evil thing I've ever seen you do." 

I smirked. "And they're _part_ of the walls. He's going to have to melt this entire place to the ground and start over to get rid of them." 

A bubble floated to the surface of the water and popped, letting the sound of laughter escape. Fuck, I was going to have to do something about Xellos, or risk a repeat of this idiocy. 

"Haul the cone up so that I can talk to him," I told Val. My dragon nodded, bent down, and yanked a sodden Xellos up by his collar. The slimy cone was still grinning that empty grin. 

I put my sword away—I wasn't going to need it for what was coming next—and turned to face Xellos, poking a finger in his face. " _You_ are far too dangerous to be running around loose," I said. "Trying to get the universe to pull itself apart by massively tilting the balance toward the Dragon Gods, of all fucking things . . . Are you really that bored?" 

"Hmm . . . Maybe?" Xellos offered with an even more ridiculous grin. 

"Well, I'm going to un-bore you," I growled. "You've got three choices: One, I send you to the Sea of Chaos to join Zelas. Two, I tie you to a boulder and dump you in the second-deepest part of Dolphin's domain—which she doesn't give a shit about and never looks at—and see how many generations of barnacles you've got growing on you when you finally make it out. Three . . . Well, I _am_ short a Priest right now, and you're useful even if you can't be trusted." 

Xellos' eyes slid open. I'd surprised him. Good. "You expect me to work for _you_?" 

"Why not? You've worked for everyone else." Except Dolphin. As far as I knew. 

"I've never been all that interested in conquering the world." The slimy cone's expression was edged. Dangerous. 

"I got out of that line after Phibby decided it would be fun to gut me with a spoon. Right now, I'm more interested in tamping down all the shit you've been stirring up . . . and you're the only one who knows where it all is." 

"Well, I suppose you _could_ say that." Xellos brought a finger to his lips. "I could show you my current operations . . ." 

"Not good enough. You do homage and submit yourself to a binding of my choice, or we're back to the option where you get a personal audience with the Lord of Nightmares. Keep in mind that I've snatched my brothers' and sisters' servants before," I added with a smirk. "There isn't much I don't know about safely taking in strays." 

"You . . ." A long, slow, purple blink accompanied the words. Then the pasted-on smile was back. "I did underestimate you this time, didn't I? Lord Gaav." And for once, he didn't give my title that nasty little twist with his voice. 

I wasn't about to admit that I'd underestimated him and Phibby, too, back in the day. "Make up your mind or I'll make it up for you," I warned him. "I want to get out of here before Dynast digs his spine out from under the bed." We'd succeeded against Baby Brother the first time because Val's and my coordination in battle was near-perfect. I didn't want a rematch if I could help it. The difference in strength between me and the youngest of Ruby-Eye's retainers wasn't big enough to make my victory certain, especially not when I was handicapped on the Astral. 

Xellos sighed. "Very well, then. Can you let me go?" 

"Try to run and you'll wish you hadn't," I warned him, and gestured to Val, who promptly dropped Xellos on his ass in the water. The cone immediately rearranged himself on his knees and bent to press his forehead against the tips of my boots. 

I spun off a thread of my personal energies and tagged him with it. There would be time for something more permanent later. 

"Get up," I told him, and he obediently rose to his feet. His hair and clothes were dry, the little cheat. "For future information, I never went in for that prostration crap. If someone attacks you while you're kissing the carpet, it's an awkward position to get out of. Now. Your first job for me is to deal with them." I gestured in the direction of the random surplus prisoners. "Take them to the University of Sairaag campus and dump them outside the Liguistics building. _Alive._ Tell the staff they're a present for Professor Greywords. Oh, and leave whatever water they've soaked up behind here so that they don't die of hypothermia. After that, get the fuck out of my face until you're called, and don't cause any trouble." 

"You could work up a study on day lilies to complement that one you did on morning glories." Val smirked as he stuffed his spear back into his astral pocket. 

"I can see that working with the two of you will be . . . interesting," Xellos said, and disappeared, along with the various extras. I didn't relax until I was sure he was gone. 

"Dad . . . ?" 

I looked down. And smiled. 

"It's all over, brat. Let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Correcting the formatting on that was . . . difficult. I should have been more careful with it in the first place, I suppose. I just hope it isn't too difficult to follow.
> 
> Rashatt and Raltaak are Gaav's General and Priest from the novel canon. Hopefully I didn't get the two of them confused.
> 
> One more chapter, to tie up a few loose ends.


	22. And Into the New History

I popped back in to the station first, figuring it was that or be bombarded with questions all day over the phone. That turned out to be a tactical mistake. What I _should_ have done was dropped a fucking letter on Mazenda's desk and then taken Val and Alya on a penguin-watching expedition in the high Antarctic for a week or so. 

What I would have done back in the old days (when the closest approach I'd ever made to the word "conscience" had happened when I'd needed to look up the Yvain Elven word for "dismemberment" in a dictionary) was blast the makeshift police station off its foundations, killing everyone inside. I figured Alya wouldn't like that, though. 

A Dark Lord wrapped around the finger of a preadolescent human girl. Kind of embarrassing, but there didn't seem to be anything much I could do about it. Not when I'd given her the part of my heart that wasn't already in the hands of a certain crazy dragon. Of course, I'd never wanted the fucking heart in the first place . . . 

"Boss, I haven't been able to find—" Mazenda stopped in mid-sentence and blinked. " _Ceiphied_ , you actually got her back! But, um . . . no arrests?" 

I shook my head. "We couldn't have held the culprits, even if I'd wanted to try." I might have been able to design and enchant a cell that could hold Xellos, but it would have taken a while, and probably the help of someone capable of casting holy spells. Or I could just have ordered him to sit there on his ass, but he was going to be enough of a handful without me actively abusing him. A cell that could hold Dynast was out of the question. Keeping him in prison would have meant me, personally, keeping a constant fucking watch on him, without time for so much as a tea break. 

Eris tried to grab Alya by the shoulders, but she evaded her. "Alya, I just want to be sure that you're okay." 

My daughter shrugged. "I'm a bit cold and a lot tired, but they didn't actually hurt me. They tried to make me hurt Uncle Val instead, but Dad stopped them." 

"Sweetie . . ." 

"Don't try to tell me you understand, Mom. You _know_ you've never been in a situation like that. No one would ever bother kidnapping _you_!" 

Eris reached for her again, then stopped and pulled her hand back. "No, you're right. I never have been in a situation like that. And I can't really understand how it made you feel. But can you accept that I was worried about you? Even if I'm a pretty poor excuse for a mother a lot of the time?" 

Alya bit her lip and nodded. That was when the tears started to spill over, and she turned and buried her face in the folds of my poor, battered coat. 

"I was so scared," she admitted, sounding muffled. 

I put my hand on her shoulder. "You held together pretty well, brat—I've seen grown men pissing their pants and gibbering after getting hit with a lot less than you've gone through today. And now that I know what the fuck I'm doing, I'm going to keep it from ever happening again, okay?" 

I felt her nod, but she didn't let go of my coat. Someday I was going to have to get her past her habit of grabbing onto the poor thing whenever she wanted comfort . . . but not today. Maybe when I ditched the burnt, torn, stained tan coat I was wearing and went back to my old garish golden yellow, she'd be too embarrassed to be seen with me, which would solve the problem without me having to do anything else. 

Eris . . . quietly took one step closer to me, then two, and put her hand on Alya's other shoulder. Doctor Rezo Greywords, who had been watching us through all of this byplay, slipped in close to my ex-wife and put an arm around her. _Hmmm_. Had Eris actually managed to snag herself a suitor who wasn't a total idiot this time? 

Then Val appeared at my other side and put his arm around me, and it was all I could do not to start laughing my ass off. _Marking territory, both of them. It's a good thing dragons don't piss on trees to tell other dragons to stay away from their lairs, or I'd be worried about my pants._

The . . . family get-together . . . was interrupted by the sound of someone slowly working their way up the steps and along the hall to the office. Fuck, I was starting to think I should have rented one of the function rooms at the Community Center a couple of blocks down the street, because it was getting kind of crowded in here. 

"Anybody here?" Emil poked his head in through the doorway. "Oh, wow . . ." 

"'Oh, wow,' is not a useful, or even an articulate, thing for an investigator to say . . ." Wizer's voice trailed off for a moment as he stopped in the doorway. "Sheriff, that sword violates at least three Lyzeillan laws that I can think of, and probably more that I can't." 

I raised my eyebrows. "And who the fuck's going to arrest me—you?" 

Wizer swallowed, and I could feel the least tremble of fear coming from him. "No. Not after seeing . . ." He let the sentence trail off, and shrugged. 

"Seeing the two of you rip the roof off a building and come flying in to kill Mazoku," Emil provided. "Um . . . wasn't Val using that sword before?" 

"It was a loan," Val said. "Now returned to its rightful owner." He gave me a wry grin—after all, we were the only two people in the room who knew the sword was really a materialized part of my astral body, specifically my right hind dewclaw. I could call it to my hand from anywhere in the world . . . probably from anywhere in any world. 

"So if you're not going to arrest me for violating three separate weapons laws, what _are_ you here for?" I asked. 

Wizer _hrrmph_ 'd and turned to study a corner of the room without really saying anything. Emil cleared his throat. 

"We wanted to thank you," the junior detective said. "Or at least, I did." He gave Wizer a sidelong glance. "And Inspector Wizer is glad to be alive. He just won't admit it." 

"I merely fainted," Wizer said, still staring at the corner. "I did not see anyone flying, the roof of a building being blown off by magic, or a most . . . peculiar . . . sword." He looked down at his hands and shuddered, and I grimaced. Disgust just tastes so damned _slimy_. It turns fear that would otherwise be pretty decent into this fucking awful slop that makes my guts crawl. 

If Wizer was lucky, Emil might be able to get him some counseling. If not, he'd probably come apart. Xellos might enjoy that, but I wouldn't. Even in the old days, there had always been a limit to how much I would play with my food. Wizer pissed me off, but if he'd gone against me, I would have killed him, not . . . that. 

Val looked at me with that arch to his eyebrows that said he was wondering what I was thinking about. 

"Getting soft in my old age," I muttered, and there was that sharp-edged grin of his. 

"You think _you're_ getting soft," he whispered back. "Getting used as a hostage by Dynast was one thing, but being frozen in place because a human girl had a knife to my throat . . . and Xellos saw the whole fucking thing! I'm never going to be able to live that one down." 

"If he says one word about it, I'll plant him upside-down beside his fucking day lilies," I growled. " _I_ know your worth. Never doubt it." 

"Lord Gaav . . ." 

Suddenly, I realized that the rest of the room had gone quiet, and everyone was staring at us. Confusion tastes like salted peanuts. It doesn't go well with fear. 

Mazenda's emotions were the most complex, shot through with irritation and an odd kind of puzzlement. I wondered for a moment if there was more than a coincidence of name and appearance linking her and Kanzel—and Seigram—to the Mazoku who had once served me. Normal Mazoku don't have souls . . . but packaging up the remains of a Mazoku's astral body as something _like_ a soul and sending it back out into the world again was the kind of whimsical shit the Mother of All Things sometimes pulled when She got really, really bored. 

"What the fuck is everyone's problem?" I snapped. 

Rezo Greywords cleared his throat. "If I'm not mistaken, 'Gaav' is the personal name of the Mazoku Dark Lord known as the Chaos Dragon." 

In the background, Emil went white. 

"Who is supposed to have been killed by Hellmaster back before the Plague Years," I pointed out. "Do you really think someone in that state would have gotten better? If not, don't be a fucking moron. It's just a . . . nickname." 

Greywords blinked slowly. "Of course. A nickname." His cousin snorted and shook his head in disgust, but didn't say anything. Zeldon Greywords understood about plausible deniability. 

Almost everyone in the room had relaxed again, but Emil was still terrified, and mouthing something . . . I thought it might be "bullshit". 

"Anyway," I continued, "Val and I need to take Alya home, and after all the shit I've dealt with today, I'm kind of tired, so I'm taking myself off-shift early. Eris, since we got her back in one piece, I'm not going to press any aiding-and-abetting charges, but stay out of my face for a while." 

Eris smirked. "That shouldn't be a problem," she said, glancing up at Rezo Greywords. 

"Fine. Have fun on your date." 

I tugged at a fold of space as she opened her mouth to reply. 

"Do you really think she's going to go out with that guy?" Alya asked as we reappeared in our living room. 

"I hope so, brat. He seems decent enough, unlike the usual run of assholes she picks up, and he genuinely likes her. Damned if I know why, though." I shrugged out of my sword harness and propped the long scabbard against my chair, then took off my coat and held it up in front of me for a better look at the damage. "It feels wrong to just stuff this thing in the trash. I could bury it in the backyard, I guess." 

Val snorted. Alya giggled. She was looking curiously at my sword, and I felt a soft shock through the astral as her fingers touched the worn bell guard. 

"Be careful not to tip that over, brat. It's heavy enough to crush your feet." 

"Well, _duh_. I mean, look at the size of the thing. It would weigh half a ton even if it was hollow. . . . Dad?" 

"Hm?" I could feel her working up to something, and I didn't want to spook her. 

"Can I be a Mazoku when I grow up?" 

It wasn't the words that made me jerk to a stop, but the emotions that went with them. Alya was serious. That meant I had to give her a serious answer. 

"Tell me why." 

"I thought that was kind of obvious." She wouldn't meet my eyes, though. 

"Tell me anyway." 

"Because I'm _scared_ , okay? That Dynast guy . . . and there's another one out there somewhere . . . and I know you tried to protect me, but just one little thing, one little innocent trip to the mall, and I fucked it all up . . ." 

She was crying now. I tried to brush the tears away, but she evaded me, ducking back. 

"It isn't your fault," I said firmly. "Not in any way." 

"It _is_! I'm the one who let Kira talk me into going . . . I'm the one who went off with Mom . . ." 

"And I'm the one who was so fucking confused by what was going on inside his head that he didn't take half the precautions he should have," I growled. " _Now_ I can think of half a hundred ways I could have kept anything from happening to you, but because I kept pushing my own fucking memories away, I didn't know about any of them _then_. It shouldn't have _mattered_ where you went, or who you went with." 

"I fucked up too," Val added. "I know a lot of the stuff that your Dad didn't remember, even if I don't have the power myself to do some of it, but it was all complicated to explain and I didn't want to push too hard. I figured there would be time. I'm . . . still not used to the speed that humans live at, I guess, and it's been a really, really long time since I had anyone around me that I needed to protect." 

"So _none_ of us did quite as well as we should have. I fucking hate it, but it happens sometimes. Don't tell anyone I said that, though," I added, and Alya managed a weak grin. "Still want to be a Mazoku when you grow up?" 

"I want to be able to help you," she said firmly. 

Fuck, this was getting complicated. "I can't change your fundamental nature. Mazoku are part of the world, so we're bound by its laws." Some of them, anyway. "I _could_ turn you into a Mazoku chimera like Val . . . well, half-human instead of half-dragon, but you get the idea . . . but it isn't a pleasant process, and unless it's a choice between that and letting you die, I won't even consider it until you're much older." 

"Why not?" 

"Because once you have that much Mazoku energy in your system, you stop aging," Val said. "You'd be twelve years old _forever_. And I doubt you'd enjoy that very much." 

"Ugh, no." Alya's grimace made me smile. 

"If it's still what you want in eight or ten years, we'll talk about it then." I ruffled her hair with my hand. 

"Daaaad!" She combed her hands through her hair, making it even messier, but her normal grin was back. _That's better._

"Go clean yourself up, brat. Val and I need a little time to ourselves, and I'm going to be pretty fucking ticked off if we're interrupted." 

Alya wrinkled her nose. "Fine. I get the feeling I don't want to know what you're going to be doing anyway." 

I smirked. "Probably not." 

"I think I liked it better when you didn't have a sex life. I mean, _eeew_." She disappeared upstairs, still rolling her eyes. 

"I wish she'd get over that," I grumbled. 

"I don't think kids ever do get used to the idea of their parents screwing each other. I know when I accidentally walked in on _my_ parents twining tails, it traumatized me for days." Val's smile was crooked, and I could feel the little crackle of pain that went through him whenever he let himself remember his life before he'd met me. I put my arm around his shoulders, and he sighed and leaned into it. _The past is past, little dragon. You're here now._

"She didn't exactly come with a fucking manual, and it isn't like I have a childhood of my own to use as a reference," I grumbled. I might have _physically_ been a child when I'd begun this incarnation, and a few other times before that, but I'd never matched up to the human norm mentally or emotionally. 

"You've done surprisingly well with her, I think. Although I don't know what's going to happen when she starts dating." My dragon's expression turned mischievous. 

"I've been trying hard not to think about that. I don't think I've ever met anyone I'd consider worthy of her, but at the same time, I can't lock her up in a fucking astral pocket. She's probably going to fuck up at some point, but I can't see how we can do anything more than pick up the pieces." I squared my shoulders. "Anyway, there'll be time to worry about that a couple of years from now. Right now, I have something else in mind." 

I didn't even have time to lean down to kiss him—he'd already stretched up to a convenient height and latched onto my mouth. Carnal pleasure and lust and the taste of him all mixed together almost blew the top of my head off. It did make my fly pop open as my cock shot to attention. Hopefully, that was just because the fucking zipper had already been on its way down . . . but still, I moved us upstairs before anyone could catch a glimpse through the living room windows. Although I didn't bother moving our clothes. We could pick those up later. 

I sat down on the edge of the bed, expecting Val to set himself down beside me for a little necking before we got all the way down to business, but instead he sat in my lap, which meant that my cock rubbed against the crack in his ass. 

"In a hurry—horny dragon?" I whispered in his ear. His amusement sparkled between us as he chuckled. 

"Can you blame me for wanting you? You know how I feel." And I did, although there was something under the molten-chocolate lust that my mind flinched away from, something brilliant and searing. If I'd tried to feed off that, it would have burned part of me away. 

I nipped at his neck, and he instantly tilted his head to the side, letting me do whatever I wanted. Nuzzling, licking, nipping. Sucking on his skin until the mark stood out red and proud. Tracing the scar that ended at a nick in his earlobe with my tongue. And then, with a mischievous smirk, I shifted part of my attention to the astral, where our bodies were tangled together with me leaning half-over his back. I lowered two of my heads and blew at the feathers of his wings. He shivered, and then froze as I shifted my central head and carefully nuzzled, then licked, at the nape of his neck. I pressed the sides of my fangs against his scales, and lust with a fine edge of terror on it blasted at me. 

"You taste good," I whispered, letting myself drop back to the physical again. "In more ways than one." 

"I had more than . . . just lunch in mind," Val said raggedly. 

"Good. Because I do too." I shifted, humping him, and he groaned again. 

"If you want, you can take me just like this." Val's voice was thick and throaty. "Pushing up into me . . . oh, fuck . . . Please, Lord Gaav! And now you've made me beg you again." 

"That doesn't matter anymore. And I'm not your lord when we're like this, I'm your mate. Idiot dragon. Lift yourself up a bit." 

He shifted his weight up and forward, and I quickly slicked my cock and positioned myself. 

"Now back down again," I prompted, and Val slowly lowered himself back into my lap, sliding down my cock until he was full and I was buried in slick heat and we were both groaning from the sensation. He took my hand and put it on his dick as he began to rock against me, and I stroked him in time with his rapidly increasing pace. 

I nuzzled the back of his neck, and he let loose his mating cry as an insane tidal wave of lust and pleasure washed over us both, and underneath that, the molten-hot emotion I didn't dare touch or name. Although I was fairly sure I knew what it was. How could it have been anything else? 

"My mate," I whispered, and he shuddered and thrust forward hard into my hand. Just a word, just a touch from me, and his self-control unraveled completely. Unbelievable how good that made me feel. "Mine," I repeated, nipping his ear. "Never let you go . . ." 

"L-lord Gaav . . . Fuck, I can't . . . _Ngh . . ._ " Another shudder, and suddenly my hand was all sticky and another wave of pleasure-lust was washing over me, pushing me to thrust up into him, to flood him with my seed . . . and suddenly my crippled astral senses seemed to open up completely, giving me a glimpse of how we were locked together on the other side, our energies swirling around each other. The white Ceiphied-given fire that still lurked in the deepest corners of Val's spirit brushed against me, stinging, warning, and I let it through all my defenses, let it sear some tiny fragment of him into the fucking soul Ragradia had stuck me with while I rode out the pain. 

_I'm never going to lose you again._

Afterwards we lay cuddled together on both planes, comfortably exhausted. 

"Do you still want to get married?" Val asked sleepily. 

" . . . Yeah. The reasons for doing it still hold. Alya isn't going to be of age for six years, and that means . . ." 

"Staying here," my dragon finished for me. "Well, why not? We've been worse places." 

_So we have_ , I thought, pillowing my head on his shoulder. _So we have indeed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it was about time that Eris got _a_ Rezo, even if not quite the right one. ;)
> 
> Also, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that I missed some loose ends in this, given how fast I wrote it (I think I started in April or May—my setup makes checking the file dates useless, alas) and my chronic lack of a beta reader. I apologize if someone's favourite character wasn't handled to their satisfaction.
> 
> I have one other complete Gaav/Val story that needs one more editing pass. It's nothing like this one, though. I might start posting it next week, if I can pull myself together enough to actually do that editing.
> 
> That's all there is for now. My thanks to neru, to the nameless guest who left kudos, and to everyone else who has read (or will read) this—without readers, there wouldn't be much point in my writing it.


End file.
